Dissonance

Table of Contents:

A tension with existing understandings of copyright was also detected.

The tension has been resolved, by dissolving the tension between creativity and labor and revealing the role of the author’s intellectual labor in conferring property. An underlying continuity with a broad labor theory of copyright was also thereby revealed.

We can regard the dissonance detected with previous understandings of copyright as fully resolved.

Incentive role

The incentive role of copyright was also thought to have been neglected. The incentive role of copyright has been restored, for intellectual labor.

We have therefore resolved reservations concerned with the neglect of the incentive role of copyright.

Appeal to nineteenth-century precedents

It can be recognized that the cases cited were prompted by the diffusion of information technologies, specifically with late nineteenth-century technologies for data processing, such as a system of bookkeeping and photography. A continuity with the computer as a data processing technology is thereby exposed.

The appeal to nineteenth-century precedents by the Supreme Court can then best be understood as consistent with the judicial treatment of earlier information technologies. A deep historical awareness is implied.

Consonance with natural justice

A reading of the decision had to be consonant with natural justice.

Restoring the incentive role for intellectual labor was consistent with a long established justification for copyright, as rewarding the author’s intellectual labor.

Consonance with natural justice has been reestablished.

Feist and the digital age

A specific relation to the digital age needed to be revealed.

We can confirm the relation of Feist (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991) to the digital age - the correlation of creativity utterly lacking with classic concepts of computability and the implied conception of the creative as residing within the not computable. Feist is then precisely situated in relation to the digital age. A pervasive component of digital technology processes, the automatic computational process, has been absorbed as the antithesis to creativity.

European Union

The dissolving of the tension between creativity and labor enables the approach taken within the United States to be correlated with that of the European Union, which has continued directly to emphasize intellectual labor for copyright.

Conclusion

The reading established has, then, been systematically compared with the criteria for elucidation developed in Chapter 3.

• The complexity of the judgment has been made intelligible.
• Creativity has been substantiated, as human action motivated by meaning, above a certain level of routinicity, but not over-populated.
• The tension with previous understandings of copyright has been resolved, by revealing the continuity of the author’s intellectual labor in conferring property.
• The incentive role of copyright has been restored, for intellectual labor.
• The appeal to nineteenth-century precedents by the Supreme Court can be understood as consistent with earlier forms of information technology.
• Consonance with natural justice has been revealed.
• The judgment has been precisely situated in relation to the digital age.
• The approach taken within the United States with its concern with creativity has been correlated with that of other jurisdictions which continue directly to emphasize labor.

The issues raised by the critiques can then be regarded as fully resolved.

The self-consistency of the decision, which was earlier assumed, has also been made specific and revealed, through careful analysis. The conceptual framework revealed has been rigorously followed. Its deepest component, creativity utterly lacking or the antithesis to creativity, has been grounded in a concept and practice of compelling contemporary significance, of computability.