Untitled - witz cultural

371THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTabsurd, indeed immoral, constraints. In fact, without far more access to (originally)print text than is now possible, true netrvorked hypertextuality cannotcome into being.Difficult as it may be to recognize from our position in the midst of transitionfrom print to electronic writing, "it is an asset of the new technology,"Gilbert reminds us, "not a defect, that permits users to make and modifycopies of information of all kinds-easily, cheaply, and accurately. This is oneof the fundamental powers of this technology and it cannot be repressed"(18). Therefore, one of the prime requisites for developing a fully empoweringhypertextuality is to improve, not technology, but laws concerning copyrightand authorial properry. Otherwise, as Meyrowitz warned, copyrightswill "replace ambulances as the things that lawyers chase" (24). We do needcopyright laws protecting intellectual property, and we shall need them forthe foreseeable future. Without copyright, society as a whole suffers, for withoutsuch protection authors receive little encouragement to publish theirwork. Without copyright protection they cannot profit from their work, orthey can profit from it only by returning to an aristocratic patronage system.Too rigid copyright and patent law, on the other hand, also harms society bypermitting individuals to restrict the flow of information that can benefitlarge numbers of people.Hypertext demands new classes or conceptions of copyright that protectthe rights of the author while permitting others to link to that author's text.Hypertext, in other words, requires a new balancing of rights belonging tothose entities whom we can describe variously as primary versus secondaryauthors, authors versus reader-authors, or authors versus linkers. Althoughno one should have the right to modify or appropriate another's tert any morethan one does now, hypertext reader-authors should be able to link their owntexts or those by a third author to a text created by someone else, and theyshould also be able to copyright their own link sets should they wish to doso. A crucial component in the coming financial and legal reconception ofauthorship involves developing schemes for equitable royalties or some otherform of payment to authors. We need, first of all, to develop some sort ofusage fee, perhaps of the kind that ASCAP levies when radio stations transmitrecorded music; each time a composition is broadcast the copyrightowner earns a minute sum that adds up as many "users" employ the sameinformation-anapposite model, it would seem, for using electronic informationtechnology on electronic networks.Gilbert warns us that we must work to formulate new conceptions ofcopyright and fair use, since "under the present legal and economic conven-