CHAPTER 6
Three Models
A remark from a post on the DMCA-discuss list from June 5, 2003
reads: “Take copyright away and guess what? Somebody is going
to undercut YOU in price because they can make cheap copies, and
thus, YOU won’t make any money at all!” “YOU” there referred to
an author who had spent a number of years writing a novel.
How can I respond to the above assertion? I want to start my deliberations on this subject with yet another quote: “If art teaches anything (to the artist, in the first place), it is the privateness of the
human condition. Being the most ancient as well as the most literal
form of private enterprise, it fosters in a man, knowingly or
unwittingly, a sense of his uniqueness, of individuality, of
separateness—thus turning him from a social animal into an
autonomous ‘I’” (Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Lecture, 1987). This gives
us direction for further analysis.
If a work of art, according to Brodsky, is a private enterprise, it is obviously of a different nature than a regular business. The artist’s “business” is to foster a sense of uniqueness in humans.
When we regard art as art, we must take into account its nature. We
must remember and take seriously the fact that art is not determined
or driven by rewards or punishments, profits or losses. On the other
hand, we know that business does develop around art. In this case
we must take into account and apply relevant laws. Hence, we have
to determine what part of an artwork, where and when, may be
traded and what part of it, where and when, must be just shared.
If we uphold this approach—that is, if we try to follow the precise nature of our subject—then there is hope that we will get
the most from art in terms of both creativity and business. This also
means that we can resolve and forget all of the problems caused by
