------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (June 2006)  
  
Helle Porsdam, editor, _Copyright and Other Fairy Tales: Hans   
Christian Andersen and the Commodification of Creativity_.   
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006.  vi + 172 pp. $85 (cloth), ISBN:   
1-84542-601-0.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by B. Zorina Khan, Department of Economics,   
Bowdoin College.  
  
  
Once upon a time a professor of American Studies at the University of   
Southern Denmark had a cute idea.  She would edit a volume of essays   
that employed the literary device of linking Hans Christian Andersen   
(1805-1875) to the authors' own particular dicta on copyright policy.   
Helle Porsdam (for that is the name of our editor) herself would   
compose a preface to summarize the contributions of her essayists and   
to introduce Hans Christian (HCA) as the "best of story tellers" to   
those of us who were more familiar with Pikachu or Scooby Doo rather   
than the Little Match Girl.  The truth is that the real HCA had   
little or nothing to do or say about copyright; but, rather than   
unpleasantly carping about minor details, let us, like all consumers   
of fables, ignore such inconvenient facts and turn our attention to   
the narration.  
  
The first chapter is related by Lawrence Lessig, who starts out with   
the obligatory reference to HCA but cleverly employs a Dr. Seuss-like   
accent: "Knowledge is remix.  Politics is remix. Remix is how we   
create.  Remix is how we recreate. ... Think a bit about this concept   
of 'remix.'  Think a bit about 'remix' in particular before   
technology got into the mix.  Think about it before Hollywood got in   
the mix" (p. 16). Lessig's point is that we all recreate and   
reinterpret culture, either as writers, readers, viewers or   
commentators.  Social constraints on our ability to reconstruct   
culture range from none (an animated discussion about a movie among   
friends) to state-imposed remedies (jail and a $250,000 fine for   
illegal copying of the same movie.)  Technological innovations such   
as digitalization have had a dramatic impact on the culture of   
remixing: the "explosion" of copying on the Internet; the "war" and   
"battles" against piracy; and the "weapons" used to prevent illegal   
remixing.  Copyright law, in this new regime, imposes prohibitively   
high costs on the creative process of remixing.  The raconteur, as in   
all fairy tales, knows the way through this maze.  One example is the   
nonprofit organization he founded, the Creative Commons, which   
specifies the commercial uses that can be made of works by the   
participants in the Commons.  
  
Stina Teilmann, in the second chapter "On Real Nightingales and   
Mechanical Reproductions," stays closer to the HCA trope   
(metalepsis?) and gives several examples of HCA's fairy tales that   
centered on real versus imitation articles.  Her article explores the   
issue of authenticity in the history of copyright laws in France and   
Britain. Initially a distinction was drawn between a copy (specific   
to printing and closely related to the original) and a reproduction   
(images that are clearly different from the original), but over time   
the two terms were conflated in copyright law.  The Internet   
comprises the final stage of this conflation, where every copy is an   
original in itself, with the "same ontological status."  Since   
copyright law depends on the prohibition of the reproduction of   
originals, it "cannot cope with the order of sameness on the   
Internet" (p. 34).  Leslie Kim Treiger-Bar-Am's contribution,   
"Adaptations with Integrity," can also be viewed as another facet of   
the issue of authenticity, since the essay examines one of the   
so-called moral rights of authors to control changes to their work.   
The chapter proposes (p. 62) that "modifications to all artforms, and   
of all types, ought potentially be actionable pursuant to the   
integrity right."  
  
In the realm of books, authenticity is frequently linked to the   
"authorization" of individual writers.  Uma Suthersanen examines the   
way in which authors developed as stakeholders in the quest for an   
international copyright in the nineteenth century.  The expansion of   
markets on both sides of the Atlantic enabled the emergence of a   
class of professional writers who lobbied for recognition of   
international copyrights.  Charles Dickens was interested in   
international copyright and HCA knew Charles Dickens but the   
skeptical among us might have some trouble in viewing this as per se   
evidence that HCA was interested in copyright issues of the   
twenty-first century.  Like the central characters in many HCA tales,   
Fiona Macmillan makes a virtue of necessity and acknowledges upfront   
that her article comprises "a flight of imaginative fancy" regarding   
what HCA might have to say about copyright rules today.  She   
concludes by doubting that HCA "would have been sanguine about the   
picture of cultural homogenization and domination painted above" (p.   
101), much less the commodification of culture.  Michael Blakeney   
considers the "propertization of traditional knowledge" with an   
emphasis on the Australian experience.  
  
Lee Davis, another contributor to this volume, is also concerned   
about digital cultural goods in the realm of copyright.  The final   
chapter, by Marieke van Schijndel and Joost Smiers, imagines a   
(presumably better) "world without copyright."  Digital technologies,   
by "axing the roots of the copyright system," have made copyright   
impossible or at least redundant; and for today's developing   
countries, intellectual property "is nothing but a disaster" (p.   
149).  The alternative they propose is a model of usufruct without   
property rights, a model that might be applied equally to other forms   
of intellectual property, but they leave the working out of the   
technical details to a future date.  
  
We may suppose that the editor of "Copyright and Other Fairy Tales"   
does not literally mean to imply that all claims in this book are   
akin to fairy tales.  Still, as in effective fairy tales, at times   
the artless reader may be confused about the distinction between the   
authentic Hans Christian Andersen and HCA, the character created as a   
projection of the authors' own views.  The lack of recognition of his   
copyrights "sickened" Andersen; yet Porsdam is hopeful that he would   
agree with authors of the articles in her book who feel that   
"copyright is not and should not be considered as 'property'" (p. 9).   
(An equally interesting literary exercise might be to assess what   
Edward Elgar would say about calls for the end of copyright.)   As   
for copyright policy itself, this book is useful in offering several   
viewpoints, and if none of them is from an economist's perspective we   
have only ourselves to blame for not paying more attention to this   
important subject.  Moreover, I did learn the surprising fact that   
there is actually an HCA story that I have yet to read, called   
"Auntie Toothache."  Or was that just another abstruse metonym for   
intellectual property in the twenty first century?  
  
  
B. Zorina Khan is Associate Professor of Economics at Bowdoin   
College, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and   
the author of _The Democratization of Invention: Patents and   
Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790-1920_ (Cambridge   
University Press, 2005).  
  
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