The Romantic History of Copyright

Today, a copyright fight is underway: between big technology companies that need lots of data to train their AI models and creators who do not want to give that data up for free. But the concept of ‘copyright’ is an old one.

This lecture explores the surprisingly long history of copyright, the competing justifications for it, the strange economic properties of ideas that complicate these arguments, and the ‘romantic vision’ of the author that appears – mistakenly – to resolve many difficulties.