Copyright and Mass Social Authorship
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663914565848 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | Elena Cooper |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Copyright and Mass Social
Authorship: A Case Study
of the Making of the
Oxford English Dictionary
Elena Cooper
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, UK; CREATe Copyright Centre, Glasgow University, UK
Abstract
Social authorship ventures involving masses of volunteers like Wikipedia are thought to
be a phenomenon enabled by digital technology, presenting new challenges for copyright
law. By contrast, the case study explored in this article uncovers copyright issues con-
sidered in relati on to a 19th-centur y social authorsh ip precedent: the 70-year process
of compiling the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (NED) instigated by the
not-for-profit Philological Society in 1858, which involved thousands of casually organized
volunteer readers and subeditors. Drawing on extensive original archival research, the
article uses the case study as a means of critically reflecting on the claims of existing inter-
disciplinary literature concerning copyright and ‘authorship’; unlike the claims of the so-
called Romanticism thesis, the article argues that copyright law supported an understand-
ing of NED authorship as collaborative and democratic. Further, in uncovering the practi-
cal solutions, which lawyers considered in debating issues relating to title and rights
clearance, the article uses the 19th-century experience as a vantage point for considering
how these issues are approached today; despite the very different context, the copyright
problems and solutions debated in the 19th century demonstrate remarkable continuity
with those considered in relation to social authorship projects today.
Keywords
Copyright, Oxford English Dictionary, Romanticism, social authorship, Wikipedia
Corresponding author:
Elena Cooper, Trinity Hall, Cambridge CB2 1TJ, UK.
Email: escc2@cam.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
2015, Vol. 24(4) 509–530
ªThe Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0964663914565848
sls.sagepub.com
The historical development of copyright concepts is the subject of a significant body of
interdisciplinary scholarship published in this journal among others (see the special sec-
tion of Social & Legal Studies, 2006, vol. 15, issue 1, in particular Barron, 2006a: 32,
2006b). Whilst some scholars assert that the legal sphere is distinct and has overlapped
with other domains, such as aesthetics, ‘only fortuitously’ (Saunders, 1994: 96; see also
Barron, 2002a: 289, 2002b: 378), others have presented copyright concepts as formu-
lated ‘at the intersection of a number of different discourses’ such as law, economics,
politics and aesthetics (Scott, 2010: 256, drawing on the notion of ‘boundary concepts’
from the sociology of science).
A much-cited example of the latter approach is Martha Woodmansee’s seminal piece
in Eighteenth-Century Studies, which forms the foundation of what copyright scholars
often term the ‘Romanticism thesis’. Woodmansee located the emergence of the modern
notion of ‘authorship’ in 18th-century debates that involved the ‘interplay between legal,
economic and social questions on the one hand and philosophical and aesthetic ones on
the other’; in a bid to make a living by the pen, writers such as William Wordsworth
sought to redefine writing, so as to justify legal protection for their works (Woodmansee,
1984: 440). The concept of authorship articulated in this process, argues Woodmansee in
her subsequent work with Peter Jaszi, was a solitary one, often termed Romantic, that
authorship is ‘originary in the sense that it results ... in an utterly new, unique – in a
word "original" – work which, accordingly, may be said to be the property of its creator
and to merit the law’s protection as such’ (Jaszi and Woodmansee, 1996: 947). In the
view of these scholars, this idea of authorship has constituted the ‘linchpin’ of copyright
law since the 18th century (Jaszi and Woodmansee, 1996: 947).
Other scholars are sceptical about these claims. For example, David Saunders argues
against ‘the pressure of the discourse of Romantic aesthetics on the historiography of
copyright’; such an approach may distort copyright history, misrepresenting it as gov-
erned by a ‘single dialectic or logic’. Saunders instead sees aesthetics and copyright
as ‘separate spheres of existence’ (Saunders, 1994: 95, 103, 96). Similarly, Anne Barron
refutes the connection between copyright’s concept of authorship and Romanticism and
explains affinities between aesthetic theory and copyright’s concept of ‘work’ by refer-
ence to ‘peculiarities of copyright’s legislative history’ divorced from ‘deliberate aes-
thetic discrimination’ (Barron, 2002b: 374, 380).
Drawing on substantial original archival research, this article presents a historic case
study, which reveals a relation between copyright and authorship distinct from all these
positions: the discussions over copyright protection for the dictionary entitled, A New
English Dictionary on Historical Principles, published by the Clarendon Press, and
today known as the Oxford English Dictionary (hereafter the NED).
1
The case study
shares with the Romanticism thesis an interest in the intersection between copyright and
wider ideas surrounding authorship. However, the notions of authorship uncovered are
very different. Central to the Romanticism thesis is the claim that copyright, with its
emphasis on solitary originary authorship, marginalizes or denies other types of author-
ship, such as ‘group or collaborative projects’ (Jaszi and Woodmansee, 1996: 948), with
the 19th century identified by Woodmansee as the time when this ‘Romantic’ concept of
authorship ‘acquired the powerful charge’ that is said to have transfixed copyright from
then to today (Woodmansee, 2000: 67). In view of this literature, copyright issues arising
510 Social & Legal Studies 24(4)
To continue reading
Request your trial