Intellectual Property, Copyright, Authorship, and Individuality in Music and Print Culture :: Intellectual Property Copyright Authorship

Intellectual Property, Copyright, Authorship, and Individuality in Music and Print Culture When the alphabet was invented, speak epics could be converted into an abstract representation - writing. The experience of the spoken epic poem could be transformed into written format. Although books can be read aloud and therefore retain some similarity to the communal genius of the oral tradition, books can also be read silently in solitude, emphasizing the individual reader. Among the many functions that Roger Chartier has attributed to the figure of the author is not only the intent of creator to the content, but also to appropriate ownership of that creation to whomever owns the post rights to that content (36). Copyright law protects the specific manifestations of ideas and facts, but not those ideas and facts themselves. When commemoration was no longer used to experience memory, individual authors came to be recognized as readers became less participatory in the process o f getting meaning from the work. The author as creator became an individual who gave meaning to an audience fragmented by the ability of the written word to separate its readers from one another. The author serves as a run into point for individual readers to receive meaning, whereas in pre-literate times, this meaning would have been constructed by a the entire group in the immediacy of the performance. In terms of property ownership, one parallel in music was the development of an agreed upon system of notes, scales, and representations of musical sounds and timings. This musical alphabet was necessary to write down scores of music, whether the past Egyptians music of the spheres or Beethovens Ninth Symphony. It serves to organize noise into a format that is accepted as the creation of a musician. As Albert Borgmann writes, The identity and integrity of a pitch of music can be underwritten by a score only if there is a complete and authoritative score (94). This means tha t a written account of a performed piece is only equal in validity to the performed piece if some amount of authority is granted the former. The composer/author of the piece serves as the source of this authority. However, if there is no score, the identity and integrity of the piece must lie in its performance. In this case, it is the performers of the actual song that constitute its integrity, and this has implications that antagonise the functions of the author.