Who Holds the Copyright?

Our names are written in sand.

In the world of literature, questions of ownership often arise. Scholars wonder if Shakespeare really is the author of Shakespeare's works. For some this is a hot debate. Same goes in biblical scholarship. Thoughts on the actual authorship of each book of the Bible precede the historical readings of each book in the Interpreters Bible, for example. Is Solomon really the author of the words of wisdom ascribed to him? Serious scholars wonder. Did the apostle Paul write all those epistles?

All these centuries later, I'm content to ascribe authorship of a certain body of Elizabethan plays and poems to William Shakespeare. The name really means little more to me than a time and place in English history. As for Paul's letters, they are the Pauline texts. Whether or not someone named Paul wrote them is immaterial. The wisdom stands outside and beyond Paul, whoever Paul was.

It's a hard thing in this age of memoir and oral history to detach text and the value of its wisdom from the life of the author..We seem to value like never before the individual voice and the individual experience. Even if we don't remember the names. The real point is that we recognize that within each of us exists a voice that is entitled to speak for its age and capable of expressing an experience that is at once individual and universal--and we don't have to be Shakespeare to do that.

Watchers of Ken Burns's documentary The War will likely remember that his oral history of World War II includes voices of ordinary people from the North, South, East, and West of the US. The names might not stick, but the place will--and so, especially, will the experience. Whatever they said that connects us to them and them and us to the cosmos will stick. Names are irrelevant.

Our names are written in sand; ownership is a myth. I think of this whenever I see watermarked photos on blogs or read copyright restrictions on posts. I wonder how I would feel if someone plagiarized my own photos or the work closer to my heart, my writing. I would be angry at first. But then, I know copycats--parasites--don't get far without a host. Anyway, if someone found something I wrote to be useful or meaningful, I'd be happy for that. The fact is, I don't know if anyone ever has plagiarized my work or used it without attribution.

In the big picture, it doesn't matter to me. Right here and now I feel that so long as I am a part of an active conversation about or through creative work, it means something to me that my work represent me and I, it. Nevertheless, I'd be thrilled to know I might create something that can do fine without me. I can hope the work will speak for itself.

Signing your work, claiming ownership, is a key to commercial success. Name recognition is everything. It can put food on the table. But what about the artist who doesn't sign, who doesn't show in a gallery, who doesn't measure success in these ways? Perhaps he or she has moved on or away from being commercially successful to being successful in some other way. Perhaps there are other ways of measuring success.

The artist who cares about the survival of ideas and thinking about ideas above and beyond all else is to my mind a success. Commercial success is another story. Anyway, the tide will roll in and take away those names in the sand.We will be left with what is true. We will call it art. We will breathe it.