Untitled - witz cultural

358HYPERTEXT 3.0 has pointed out that "as the model of the integrated private self of the authorfades, the rights of the author as a persistent self-identity also become moreevanescent, more difficult to define. If the work of an author no longer carrieswith it definite physical properties as a unique original, as a book in definiteform, then the author's rights too grow more tenuous, more indistinct"(Electic Language,22ll.If the author, like the text, becomes dispersed or multivocal,how does society fairly assign legal, commercial, and moral rightslBefore we can begin to answer such a question, we have to recognize thatour print-based conceptions ofauthorial property and copyright even now doharm as well as good. They produce economically irrational effects, hinderingas well as stimulating invention. Indeed, as |ames Boyle reminds us inhis splendid book about law and the construction of an information society,copyright is a fence to keep the public out as well as a scaffolding for the billboards d isplayedin the marketplace of ideas; it can be used to deny biographers the abilitytoquote from orto paraphrase letters; to silence parody; to control the packaging, context,and presentation of information. To saythat copyright promotes the production and circulationof ideas is to state a conclusion and not an argument. At the very leastwe mightwonder if, in our particular copyright regime, the gains outweigh the losses. (l 8-l 9)Boyle forcefully argues that the author paradigm, which provides the centerofcopJtight law and our current visions ofintellectual properry, "produceseffects that are not only unjust, but unprofitable in the long term" (xiv), in partbecause it only rewards certain kinds of creation to the detriment of others.Using the examples of the way Western scientists and corporations copyrightmaterials based on information derived from communities in the ThirdWorld, he demonstrates how laws supposedly intended to promote innovationby rewarding creators recognize only creativity and originality based onromantic authorship.Centuries of cultivation by Third World farmers produces wheat and rice strains withvaluable qualities-in the resistance of disease, say, or in the ability to give goodyields at high altitudes. The biologists, agronomists, and genetic engineers of a Westernchemicalcompanytake samples ofthese strains and engineerthem a littleto adda greater resistance to fungus or a thinner husk... The chemical company's scientistsfit the paradigm ofauthorship. The farmers are everything authorshould notbe-their contribution comes from a community rather than an individual, from traditionratherthan innovation, from evolution ratherthan transformation. Cuess whogets the copyrightl Next year the farmers may need a license to resow the grainfromtheircrops. (126)