Re: Article on Protection of History

John Shaeffer <shaeffer[_at_]oslaw.com> wrote:
>
> My position is that the acceptance of a broad subjective component to
> history has demonstrated that there are a myriad of ways to tell the
> story of any historical event. Applying this position to copyright
> laws should translate into broader protections for works founded on
> historical events by underscoring the expression of creativity that
> goes into a work founded on history and challenging the premise that
> any broader protections to history would take events out of the
> public discourse.
>

There is a whole body of scholarship on the implications of deconstructionism for copyright and the concept of "authorship." While it's not about history per se, it seems to parallel your argument. I'd start with James Boyle's 1996 book Shamans, Software and Spleens and work backward -- he cites most of this literature.

Mark Lemley
<mlemley[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu> Received on Tue Apr 14 1998 - 14:51:32 GMT