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 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