Published in Social Scientist vol. 41. nos. 1-2 January-February 2013. Censorship through Copyright: From print to digital media Abstract With the advent of printing in Europe came the era of mechanical reproduction of art. The high capital cost involved meant that the printer/ financier had a mediatory role between the artist and the audience. A combination of factors – the printer/ financier's interests of protecting profits from piracy, the state's suspicion of the spread of seditious material and the authors' campaign against the overbearing monopoly of printers lead to the first legislations on copyright. What began in the 1709 as a fourteen year protection now extends to a good fifty years beyond the death of the author under the 2002 TRIPS agreement. Copyright laws have garnered greater bite and ferocity. This paper discusses the hiatus between the claims and realities of Copyright laws and outlines the challenges in the age of the digital media. In 2007 following the practice of erecting pandals (tent houses) in the style of famous buildings during the Durga Puja celebrations, the FD Block Durga Puja Committee in Salt Lake, Kolkata had recreated the Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry from the popular Harry Porter stories by J.K. Rowling (Anon 2009a). To its dismay with 90 percent of the work on the pandal complete and with the festival a few days away, the FD Block Puja Committee received a 394 page summons served on it by Penguin Books, the publisher of J.K. Rowling's books. The publisher demanded a compensation of Rs. 20 lakhs for copyright violation through unauthorised use of an idea from Rowling's book (Anon 2009b). The matter went to court and the Kolkata High Court in its order directed the Puja Committee to pull down the structure immediately after the festival was over but exempted it from paying any compensation to the publishers. It was unlikely that the copyright holders would have lost revenue due to the depiction. If anything, the huge number of visitors to the pandal would have increased the exposure of the 'Harry Potter' brand. So was this case of cultural gap, with the Western litigant unaware of the culture and implications of the Durga Puja festival in Kolkata? Possibly yes. But there was more to it. In recent years media companies have taken up techniques of guerrilla litigation against instances of copyright violation selectively and arbitrarily to create deterrents. The litigants, unsuspectingly fall prey to legal and financial muscle of the powerful corporate litigants. These cases attract media publicity, attempting to set examples for other possible violators of intellectual property. 1 The target of Warner Brothers or Penguin Books was not to get compensated for loss, but by flexing legal muscles get the Puja Committee to admit that they were in the wrong even if in ignorance. In fact, the case offered enough publicity to the copyright norms which the litigants wanted to enforce. As the world media gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands it is also using every trick in the 1 One of the most famous instances of such strategy was that of Jesse Jordan, a student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. A software enthusiast, Jesse had designed a search engine which enable users on the institute's network to share their files with each other. Though Jesse did not intend it so, bulk of the files which were shared using this engine were music files. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA ), a powerful conglomerate of music labels, branded Jesse a 'pirate' and demanded a compensation of $15,000,000. Of course, Jesse could not pay that much. The RIAA offered him a settlement of parting with all his saving which would have funded his furhter education and early career or face a prison term. Left with no option Jesse had to comply (Lessig 2004, 48-52). book to continue its monopoly over the media and information sector. It uses monopolistic practices to prevent competition, works in close relationship with national governments and international agencies to mold policy to suit their business interests, uses technology to protect intellectual property, as well as uses strong arm tactics as described above to ensure hegemony over the world of information, which has become an important means of power and control in today's world. In this paper I shall study the partnership between copyright and censorship by locating the origins and development of the copyright regime within the context of creative methods and the technologies of dissemination of ideas. I shall look both before the moment of mechanical reproduction of cultural goods and beyond it to the possibilities which have been thrown up by the advent of digital media technologies. Before the advent of print in England the primary modes of dissemination of ideas was through oral communication and script. The two worked in tandem with script forming a mode of communication among the literate population. Secular literature declined with the advent of Christianity and copies of ecclesiastical literature were made by church scribes. Such literature were studied by the clergy and belonged to the church. The manuscripts and their content, therefore, were fully within the control of the church and the state to which it was closely allied. There was no sense of individual ownership of such ecclesiastical manuscript and heavenly reward was the just compensation for the scribes and ecclesiastical writers. It was with the growth of the universities that lay men became men of letters and secular literature was revived. The men of the university needed much more than heavenly reward and assumed a position under the patronage of noblemen (Masterson 1940, 622-25). The moment of technological change when the relationship between the author and the text was altered came in 1476 when William Caxton produced the first printed book in English. Initially, though the printing of books was vastly restricted to classics and religious tracts. The advent of printing did not immediately alter the attitude to copying - printing behaved as a more efficient way of copying, with mass production still not a reality. By the 16th century with the growth of learning, the demand for cheaper books increased and the printers' search for saleable books increased. The unceasing demand for books gave rise to a new industry. There were very few printing presses in England, mostly located in London. The printers did not want competition and were secretive about the process of printing (Judge 1934, 3-4). A book once printed could be reprinted several times by other printers, thus limiting the earnings of the first printer (Masterson 1940, 467). From this point on it is possible to identify two relationships – one between, the author and the printer over the ownership of the texts and two, between various printers over the right to copy the text. It was not until the reformation was well under way that the church grew suspicious of the blasphemous potential of the printing press. It was then that a third relationship developed, that between the state and the printers over the right to print books. To begin with the printers did not seek permission from the author to print their manuscripts. In fact, on numerous occasions a book was printed without the author's knowledge, and sometimes without knowing who the author was (Baumol 2006, 58). It was also possible that the version which was printed would have been copied many times and be an imperfect copy of the work, or the author would have made changes to the original which would not be reflected in print. Since authors had not started depending on the printing of their books for livelihood, they continued to view the manuscript as the primary source of circulation. In certain occasions the printer did offer some money to the author of a book, but it was more in the nature of patronage which governed the creative economy. The author was not looked upon as the sole and soul source of the creative work, but as providing one of the factors which went into book production. In Germany where the development of the printing industry developed much later, this is how the “book” was described in 1753: Book, either numerous sheets of white paper that have been stitched together in such a way that they can be filled with writing; or, a highly useful and convenient instrument constructed of printed sheets variously bound in cardboard, paper, vellum, leather, etc. for presenting the truth to another in such a way that it can be conveniently read and recognized. Many people work on this ware before it is complete and becomes an actual book in this sense. The scholar and the writer, the papermaker, the type founder, the typesetter and the printer, the proofreader, the  publisher, the bookbinder, sometimes even the gilder and the brass-worker,etc. Thus many mouths are fed by this branch of manufacture. (quoted in Woodmanse 1984, 425) Thus, 'the scholar' or 'the writer' is but one component in book production and is treated as equal to the bookbinder, the typesetter and even the brass-worker. There was nothing in this definition which suggested any special position or faculty with which the author is endowed. Or that the work of the author constituted a value that transcended the manuscript in its physical form (Woodmanse 1984, 443). The experience of the writers could be related to the other arts as well. Painters in 15th century Florence were regarded as skilled artisans and paid accordingly (De Marchi and Miegroet 2006, 97). For performance art forms like music and drama the experience was slightly different due to difference in form. The modern concept of the performance text was yet to emerge. Musicians who were making the transition from the church to the courts of noble men between the 15th to the 17th century, could hope to earn freelance income by publishing the music script. But the impresario of the opera had the first right to the musician's script. Spurious copies of the score could make their way into foreign courts and cause the musician to lose his position with his patron who would charge him for disloyalty (Scherer 2006, 129-137). On the Elizabethan stage it was the theatre manager who had the say over the script and not the playwright. The theatre manager, further had the privilege of utilizing the services of more than one writer for a particular act. The printers who made the maximum capital investment in paying for the various factors of production, printed for profit – and like other manufacturing guilds wanted to protect themselves from competition. The need for ecclesiastical and state control on potentially seditious material and the pressure from printers' guild for monopoly over the books that they printed resulted in the earliest legislations en route to the copyright regime. In a move to restrict the entry of papistical literature into England, Henry VIII banned all commerce in foreign-bound books. In 1557, Mary granted the Stationers' Company a monopoly on printing. The Stationers' Company was directly answerable to the Queen and so this allowed the monarch control over material produced by enemies and challengers to the crown (Judge 1934, 19-25). Though this charter was effective in controlling the circulation of seditious material, as printing technology improved, piracy flourished mainly among poorer men in the trade who tried to scrape up earnings by printing a popular book. The printers were unhappy with the 1557 law as it granted the monarch a monopoly over book production. The English Monopolies Act of 1614 nullified the control of the crown over printing and once again piracy flourished. The restrictions were replaced once again when the Cromwellian regime took power in 1642. After the restoration of the monarch in 1660, the printers demanded a law that applied itself to the printed book and not to the act of printing. Though the bulk of the pressure on the state to enact a legislation protecting the act of book publishing was provided by the printers, authors too had their issues in seeking similar legislation. The period between 16th to 18th century was one when, like almost all aspects of European life at the time, literary and artistic activity was undergoing a process of transformation. With increasing involvement of the writer in public life more and more writers sought to make a career through publication of their work. But the censorship of the press, the unwillingness of printers to take on experimental work, the incidence of unauthorized printing of manuscripts and piracy of published works made this option extremely difficult. In 1643 John Milton argued against the censorship of the press in Areopagitica. John Locke's essay of 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Second Treatise of Government, argued that since art and other creative material are produced by the labour of the human body, it rightly belongs to the person producing it. In 1704, barely five years before the Statute of Anne ushered in the first legislation on copyright protection, Daniel Defoe argued in An Essay on the Regulation of the Press for the state to encourage writers to act in the service of knowledge by guaranteeing the right to prevent the unauthorized publication of their works (Defoe 1958). Edward Young raised the issue of property and argued, in Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), that the writer was entitled to his creation due to his original contribution to the world of letters (Woodmanse 1984, 430-431). Young's work in translation produced a response from the German philosophers Herder, Goethe, Kant and Fichte who in their arguments sought to locate each book as carrying the imprint of its author. Progress and Pervasiveness of Copyright The idea of copyright emanated as a system to balance between an incentive to printers to bring literature to the public domain, as well as to maintain control over the content of such literature. Prior to 1709 the idea of a 'copyright' was just that, the right to copy. Yet the Statute of Anne in 1709, marked several changes in the attitude of the law towards the production of intellectual goods, which differentiated it from other sorts of goods. It now applied the right to print on a particular work, rather than the entire exercise of printing. But the monopoly granted to the printer to print a particular book was not a perpetual right but limited to 14 years. The law which was titled “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies”, recognized the role of information in the public domain which could be access by all other users to create further works (Jaszi 1991, 468). Even in the copyright period the law did not seek to restrict the availability of the book in public libraries for non-commercial distribution. Thus, even at its originary moment the legal view on protection of intellectual property displayed an ambivalence between the need for free access to information and that of incentivising the act of bringing information and knowledge in the public domain. This was so because intellectual property differs from other forms of property in two crucial ways. First, intellectual property or information is what economists term to be “public goods” which are non-rival and non- exclusive in their consumption, i.e. the consumption of the good by one person does not prevent another person from using it. Second, all creative products involve two kinds of costs – the “cost of expression” or the cost of the producing the first copy of the work, this being fixed cost; and the “cost of reproduction”, that is the cost of producing multiple copies of the product from its first copy (Landes and Levine 2006, 214). In the era of mechanical reproduction of art, a combination of the two costs involved prevents the author or the artist from bringing the work to the public domain through mass production, which was possible in the manuscript and oral cultures. In the era of mechanical reproduction a fairly large capital input is involved. Also, the cost of producing the second and subsequent copies is substantially lower than that for producing the first mechanical copy. A combination of these two factors meant that while one had to depend on the printer to bring the work into the public domain, the printer in turn demanded substantial protections in order to reap returns against their investment which amounted to restricting access to the work. By restricting the copyright period to 14 years and allowing Circulating Public Libraries, the 1709 law registered this ambivalence in the basic tenets of intellectual property legislation. Interestingly, while the copyright legislation restricts the tenure of right to reproduce a work, it is distinguished from the “moral right” of the author of the work. “Moral right” was the addition of French writers like Victor Hugo to the Anglo-Saxon concept of copyright which was primarily concerned with economic rights. By agreeing to grant the publisher permission to print a work penned by her, the author gives up the copyright over the work, but that does not transfer the “moral right” to be called the author of the work and to be protected from damage caused to her reputation through inappropriate usage of the work. However, in the modern day “moral rights” of authors too are restricted through extra legal measures. Law does not recognize the “moral rights” of artists involved in the creation of “works for hire”, e.g. programmers working in a software firm or copywriters preparing a jingle in an advertising agency. Protecting the misuse of an artist's material is often subject to huge legal expenses and it is seldom that an individual artist can match up to the might of a corporate house. “Moral right” is also restricted to the artist's life term (Landes and Levine 2006, 224-225). Copyright laws have grown in scope and severity down the centuries and today have encompassed almost all forms of creative expression from mechanically reproducible art like books and films, to the visual arts like painting and sculpture to the even intangible forms like theatre and choreography. From the fourteen years in the 1709 Statute copyright protection is extended to fifty years after the death of the author under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime. What initially was a right to copy has now been extended to the right to control the usage of the work in any form. Lawrence Lessig explains in Free Culture, “even if the copyright to Shakespeare’s works were perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the term was that no one could reprint Shakespeare’s work without the permission of the Shakespeare estate.” Whereas had Shakespeare's works been produced under the conditions laid down by the TRIPS regime the copyright holders could control over, “about how the work could be performed, whether the work could be translated, or whether Kenneth Branagh would be allowed to make his films” (Lessig 2004, 90). The grant of copyright protection was initially at the hands of local councils often varying substantially in conditions in various parts of a monarchy or dukedom. National copyright laws came about in the 18th century. In the 19th century various nation-states entered into bi-lateral agreements to grant copyright protection to works produced in each other's territories. It was with the establishment of the Berne Convention in 1886 that the first move to develop an international standard of copyright was undertaken. It was revised through the years till the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) was adopted in Geneva in 1952. But the UCC was not acceptable to many countries outside of the French and British empires – the Soviet Union joined it only in 1973 and the United States as late as 1980. The international regime on copyrights was brought under the most uniform character in history with the TRIPS agreement in 1995 followed by the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2002. Chinks in the Armour Though the progressive broadening of scope and effectiveness of the copyright regime appears to have a consistency in granting greater incentive for production and dissemination of knowledge and ideas through protecting those involved in creation and dissemination, the basic contradiction has remained that between the enlightenment ideals of unbridled spread of knowledge and ideas and the desire of profit which followed. Because of the capital investment involved the relation between the author and the reader remained mediated by the publisher, producer, art dealer. The contradictions which are apparently ironed out in the legislations are visible through the numerous case studies where copyright laws are interpreted. In 1888, when George Eastman developed the first Kodak camera, the handy alternative threatened to run over the cumbersome “daguerreotype” cameras. Photography could now be practiced by individuals outside the studio. This revolutionized photography as a social practice, as it was now possible for people to photograph moments and places and carry them back many miles. Certain litigations related to privacy had threatened to block the spread of the new invention as legally the photographer ought to seek permission from the subject or the owner of the subject before capturing a photograph. Had this objection been upheld the history of the development of photography would have been rather different (Lessig 2004, 31-35). What was in the early 19th century considered to be a privacy related litigation, would today have been more effectively labeled as a copyright litigation. An enthusiast photographing a performance or even tourists photographing a monument without requisite payment at the gate could be a potential violation of intellectual property rights. Lawrence Lessig recounts the court battle between the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and FM radio stations in the 1930s caused the crippling of the potential of the powerful technology. In this case the courts ruled in favour of the RCA's AM radio empire (Lessig 2004, 3-7). Yet more recently in 1984 in the case of Sony Corp. v Universal Studios Inc., where the latter tried to prevent the entry of the household Video Tape Recorders, the US Supreme Court ruled that business interests could stop technological development by quoting the Article 1.8 of the US Constitution: “ultimate aim of copyright law is the achievement of a public purpose: to stimulate creative activity for the general public good and to ensure public access to the products of such activity” (Nawn 2009, 6). Needless to say the interpretation of laws have been inconsistent with respect to copyright and intellectual property. I would argue that this has been due to the contradiction between the aims of protecting both public good and private interests. Beyond the law, corporate holders of copyright have used other methods to protect their interests. I have already talked of the use of the threat of litigation against financially vulnerable violators as a strategy of deterrence. Software firms today use another strategy of almost compulsive obsolescence of their products beyond a certain time period or number of uses. Music distributors use innovative packaging along with inlay cards and lyrics to give a feel of originality to optical discs which otherwise have the same content as a non-factory copy (Nawn 2009, 3). Creative artists have in certain occasions expressed their frustration at the attitude of the corporate media giants. One of the most famous case concerns Marx – I mean the Marx Brothers. When the Marx Brothers planned A Night in Casablanca (1946) as parody to the Hollywood hit Casablanca (1946), the producers of the latter film Warner Brothers served a notice to the Marx Brothers warning them of the legal consequences of their proposed movie. Instead of taking legal cover the Marx Brothers wrote back to the studio pointing out that they “were brothers long before you were”. By principal of prior use, therefore, the Marx Brothers held copyright over the word “brothers” to refer to a partnership, and if the Warner Brothers insisted in litigating over 'Casablanca', they would insist on control over 'brothers' (Lessig 2004, 147-148)! Creativity Beyond Copyright The primary justification of copyright is to create a well entrenched system of incentives to encourage creativity and the creation of knowledge and encourage the creator to bring her work to the public domain. However, creativity continued to thrive even outside the system of protection offered by copyright and thus, in art forms unaffected by technologies of mechanical reproduction of art. Unlike in the copyright regime which requires a close identification between the author and the work, in these traditions of creativity often attributions of authorship are doubtful. Also, unlike the assumptions on which the copyright system is based, it is often impossible to clearly locate originality in a particular piece of art as stemming from the originator or the author. Speaking in the context of pre-modern Sanskrit texts, Sheldon Pollock noted that it is anachronistic to speak of authorship and authorial intentions. Debates on religious and philosophical matters continued across generations with reference points being the expressions of ideas rather than a lineage of authors (Pollock 2001, 7). In his study of the tradition of kirtan in Maharashtra since the 14th century, Christian Lee Novetzke describes the songs of Namdev (1270-1350) as having been composed and transmitted orally. While later poets associated with the Varkari kirtan tradition who were associated with the actual act of writing acknowledges Namdev's legacy. While the Varkari tradition requires the kirtan to be attributed to the canonical saints, even in the Naradiya tradition where innovation is more explicit, tradition requires the kirtan to be ascribed to Narada. Novetzke locates the kitratankar as the ultimate author of a kirtan performance with the multifarious references to and borrowing from various sources and interpretations. Even when the songs are noted in the bada or the notebook, the singers have the freedom to change a line for better sense, and the notings remain without any attribution to a composer (Novetzke 2003). Similar is the story of other traditional forms which are oral in dissemination and use scripture for purposes of record. Within the Sufi tradition of poetry proper unit of creation is to be ascribed to a sect, a network comprising God, the Prophet, saints and the shaykhs of the sect. Attribution patterns could vary where all poems produced within a diwan or collection could be attributed to shaykh at the helm of the diwan, or could be anonymous in attribution and even have plural attribution. A certain composition may have been revised and re-revised by various members of a sect. The munshid, or the performer of the poetic text would free to respond to interjections from the audience, practice intertextuality and was allowed space for interpretation. There existed a fluidity between the oral and the written, with the written text forming a tool for memory, thus re-entering the oral space almost immediately after being scripted. Whereas the metaphors in use were finite, creativity was exuded in the particular combination of images, the wit and interpretation. While certain acts of reinterpratation and poetic articulation may have been conducted individually, the practice of Sufi poetry required a spiritual guide, for the motivation of the poetry was not an aesthetic but a spiritual end (Frishkopf 2003). The tradition of Persian miniature paintings, so beautifully illustrated by Orhan Pamuk in My Name is Red (1998), abjured innovation. The mark of greatness in a miniaturist would be to make exact copies of the paintings of the master painters of old, and to master the art of remaking the paintings to the extent that his painting hand would memorize the drawings and no longer needed the support of vision. In fact, the greatest achievement of a painter would be to go blind painting! (Çiçekoglu 2003) The norms of authorship, incentives for creativity and the relationship between authors and texts are diverse not only in non-print cultures but in print cultures as well. Margaret Ezell has argued persuasively that even after the coming of print to England, manuscript culture continued to be the chosen alternative for writers and poets till almost the early decades of the nineteenth century. In fact, it was only after texts had enjoyed a successful script circulation that they saw the light of print. Ezell attributes this preference to the post-Restoration coteries culture and the lack of printing machines outside London (Ezell 1999). Other literary historians have ascribed the virulent attacks of well established writers against the Stationer's Company and the act of writing for print – such as that of John Dryden in MacFelknoe (1678) and Alexander Pope in Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734) – as aristocratic remnants. Whatever the case all these examples certainly demonstrate that the desire to be in print and earn money was not the sole motivation for creativity that drove these authors. Closer home master film-maker Satyajit Ray described in his memoirs, how the widow of Bibhuti Bhushan Banerji the author of Pather Panchali, turned down a lucrative offer made by another producer to produce the film version of the book because she wanted Ray to direct the film (Ray 1994, 33-34). Though Ray did not offer reasons for Banerji's choice it could be either of two – that she had given her word to Ray or that she felt Ray could do greater justice to her husband's narrative. Either way profit was not the motive that drove her decision. Publisher > Writer The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) which is a conglomerate of various media corporations in America works to the protect the interests of its constituents. According to the Occupational Employment Survey published by the U.S. Department of Labour in 2001, the President of the RIAA made more than $1 million in a year, while the average earnings of a recoding artist stood at $45,900 a year (Lessig 2004, 66). Though the explicit justification of copyright protection is to ensure the livelihood and stature of the artist a study of relative earnings clearly reveal that it is the secondary producers of art – the middlemen between the artist and the audience – who are the principal monetary beneficiaries of copyright protection. The term of copyright protection has grown manifold since its first inception, but if the author desires a broader distribution of her creative expression, she is required to enter into an agreement with the publisher which declares “The Author hereby assigns to the Publisher during the legal term of copyright including any renewals thereof the entire copyright in the Work”. Thereafter the author is entitled only to a small fraction of the proceeds of the book and publishers are known to under-report the sales figures to authors to avoid payment of royalty. Not only do the publishers and recording studios exert their control over existing creative produce, some publishers are also known to add clauses which exerts control over the future creative produce of the artist. The artists then stands in the danger of having her creativity short-shifted by the profit making strategies of the corporate publisher. When Sony Broadcasting Corporation, acquired CBS Broadcasting in 1988-89, there was a change in the overall marketing goals of the company. Sony which was till then a hardware manufacturer now wanted a 'Synergy' between hard and software to boost profits. The singer George Michael who had a contract with CBS issued a public statement dissociating himself from this development for he found that for the new management artists had 'become a small part of the production line for a giant electronics corporation, who quite frankly, have no understanding of the creative process' (Gay 1997, 68). Such reactions are not only to be found in modern day artists. In Areopagitica Milton charged against the monopoly of printers describing them to be “old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book-selling” who “do not … labour in an honest profession to which learning is indebted” (Milton 2009). He argued that the commercial interests of printers had limited the goal of the enlightenment to free knowledge from the closed walls of ecclesiastical control. In his autobiographical work Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth, 1811-13) Goethe described that the “beautiful equilibrium” that existed between the respected but poor poet and the rich book dealer became unstable in the rapidly expanding market. The poets began to compare “their own very modest, if not downright meager condition with the wealth of the affluent book dealers” (Woodmanse 1984, 435). In 18th century Venice the trading of paintings was under the complete control of merchants and art dealers who acquired originals from painters and sold them at prices which were much higher. As a reaction the College of Art in Venice stopped art dealers from enrolling as members suggesting to them that they should join the guild of furniture painters for they scarcely knew how to hold a brush! (De Marchi and Miegroet 2006, 101) Touché! Music studios have cried hoarse claiming that the introduction of MP3 music format and the emergence of P2P (peer-to-peer sharing) has lead to severe loss of revenue. They have done so on the argument that it is the artists who lose out earnings due to online piracy. While many observers have doubted this claim – for it is not clear that all who download music from P2P networks would have bought them off the shelf otherwise – the fact remains that record sales contribute only a fraction of the earnings. Their major income coming from additional labour in the form of live music performances and endorsements (Liang 2004, 714). If anything the increased exposure of an artist on the peer-sharing network can actually lead to higher value in endorsements and live shows. Not only does copyright not deliver on its promise of enriching the artist, super-earnings by an artist may actually dip her creative performance. Marie Connolly in a study of the economics of popular music cited the case of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi to suggest that security of increased earning may tend to reduce the creative output. Verdi used the copyright protection on his compositions to augment his income and as his fortunes increased the pace of his opera-writing efforts slackened (Connolly 2006, 138). Copyright protection creates access costs, not only for consumers of the artistic work, but also for creators of subsequent works. In fact, the entire intellectual property rights regime creates conditions in which innovation is stifled rather than promoted. Rajshree Chandra has argued that there has been a significant increase of the R&D in lifestyle drugs in the last few decades which allow drug companies to register super and easy profits. Private funded drug research has neglected the diseases which affect the less developed countries and the poor (Chandra 2009, 92). Copyright law incorporates in its purview, the principle of “fair use” - which is the possibility of quoting a certain extent from a published work for in another work without that constituting a copyright violation. But within the world of the corporate media the “fair use” principle is a chimera for copyright holders seek to extract rent even from minor uses of copyrighted material. Lessig recounts an amazing anecdote of how copyright can ridiculously hinder creation. He narrates the tale of a filmmaker John Else who made a documentary film Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle (1999), on the stagehands of a theatre company, his film contained a particular shot in which he interviews the stagehands as they play checkers. For about 4.5 seconds of the shot there appeared on screen a distant view of a television set playing the television series The Simpsons. The usage constituted what is legally defined as “fair use”, but to be safe Else sought permission from both the series' creator and producer. Both were willing to grant permission without hesitation. However, Fox Studios the parent controller of the series was not so accommodating – the Fox representative demanded “$10,000 to use the clip of The Simpsons”. The representative further threatened “And if you quote me, I’ll turn you over to our attorneys” (Lessig 2004, 95-99). The big guys in the media and publishing do not care for the law – they go about the protection of copyright or what they purport to be copyright with the same gung ho as George Bush when he declared that he intended to “smoke out” the terrorists from Afghanistan. A game-theory based model developed by certain economists have shown that within the artist- financier relationship, there needs to be a sufficient number of conservative artists who would be willing to produce easily marketable art to be able to sustain the presence of innovative artists who would produce experimental work (Bryant and Thorsby 2006, 515-522). The discussion so far reveals that copyright is more effective as a protection for publishers' appropriation of surplus value from authors, than it is for the protection the rights of authors. Copyright and other established models of Intellectual Property Rights are regimented to protect this exploitative relationship and the ever increasing political and economic clout of the media conglomerates are used to maintain this hegemony. The publisher-author/ artist-financier relationship is non-conducive to artistic experimentation. The attitude to innovative arts being neutral at best. If such innovation veers on the political and is developed as a challenge to the rule of capital, the attitude is one of out right rejection. Such a system can never support or tolerate dissident art forms. The nature of copyright as a system which stems the flow of knowledge, discourages innovation, and prevents free exchange of ideas is inimical to social and political change. It is interesting to note how the bourgeois society when it has placed itself in a position of dominance has abjured the same principles which it had struggled for in the era of its ascendancy. The Salad Days of Capital In the Long revolution in England where the balance of power shifted gradually from the monarchy to the parliament, information played a key role. The violent conflict of the mid-17th century Civil War gave way to party politics in the lead up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. As we have seen the church and the monarchy was always suspicious of the growth of secular literature and the freedom assumed by laymen in the pursuit of such literature. In various instances during the 16th and 17th centuries the crown tried to quell the voices of opposition by invoking direct censorship or through the Stationers' monopoly. But the bourgeoisie in its ascendancy devised ways of overcoming the challenges it faced, and ensuring a free distribution of ideas within its fraternity. While the monarchy placed restrictions on print, the bourgeois writers made use of script. Scribal culture which had registered a decline by 1640, revived after the restoration of the monarchy to circumvent censorship. This was particularly true of the dissemination of anti-Cromwellian and anti-Caroline satirical writings (Ezell 1999, 23). While circulating the texts the authors were not perturbed by of the possibility of their false appropriation but were motivated to dismantle what they felt an oppressive rule. The Coffee House became an important arena for the spread of democratic ideas and the strengthening of the public sphere. Coffee being cheaper than ale, Coffee Houses were more sociable than ale houses. These formed arena for political debates and exchange of pamphlets and satire. So threatened did the Charles II feel by the pressure generated by Coffee Houses that he issued a proclamation banning the sale of “selling or Retailing of any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea” for “the Multitude of Coffee-Houses ... had become “the great resort of idle and disaffected persons … [and] have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well for that many Tradesmen and others, do therein mis-spend much of their time” (Charles 2009). But the public sphere had gathered much strength by then and the proclamation had to be withdrawn. Matters related to England's involvement in the Dutch Wars, the convening of the Parliament and the relationship of the monarch with the King of France were openly discussed in pamphlets and aloud. In an effort to garner support of the larger population in the Popish Plot against the crown, The Earl of Shaftesbury is known to have distributed “A Letter From a person of Quality” at the Coffee Houses. Even Papists distributed their pamphlets at the Coffee Houses (Pincus 1995). Similar distribution of literature is known to have preceded the French Revolution. Print and the free exchange of opinion was closely associated with political freedom and desire of systemic change in Europe in the revolutionary phase of bourgeois ascendancy. Freedom to Copy In The Gift, Marcel Mauss suggests that the creative good is “the product of the collective mind as much as of individual mind” and that authors are the “benefactors of humanity”. He laments that the law creates conditions which do not allow the creative work to “fall into the public domain or join the general circulation of wealth as quickly as possible” (Mauss 1990, 67). No work can be fully original. To begin with the language of expression of the author's ideas belongs to the community. The author borrows from the public domain and altering according to the needs of individual expression. Creativity thus exists in the in-between space between the langue and the parole, between the individual and the collective, between the original and the traditional. Even when the awareness of the nature of borrowing has been there, the difficulty of quantifying the exact contribution of each benefactor and paying adequate compensation has meant that compensation is paid only to the last contributor. This has occurred essentially because of the existing system of compensation – a monetary compensation essential to clearing the conscience of the financier who then appropriates all rights pertaining to the work. As I have demonstrated earlier, monetary compensation is not necessarily the only motive for an artist. Also, the monetary compensation received by the artist, in most cases is no comparison to the tremendous sums raked in by the financier. The dissemination of her work, the possibility of influencing further creativity, the Keatsian desire to live beyond the work and in the case of ideologically motivated artists the desire to change the world, are extremely palpable reasons to engage in creative labour. For most of us in academics it is not the awareness that the journal article or the book chapter which we will produce would earn us substantial profit, which excites us, but the possibility of intervening in current debates, or the bettering of our academic profile is what motivates us. Moral and ideological motives are therefore, fit motive for human action. While saying this I am aware that for many artists monetary gain is the chief motive, but that is precisely my point – among all available motives for creative production the way artistic production is currently organized encourages and legitimizes monetary motivation. Unfortunately, in the case of artists and intellectual workers in the modern period, there has been a need for financiers who would take up cost of bringing the work to the public domain. Other than the role of financiers there is also the role of the gatekeepers – those who would decide who which piece of work deserved to be financed. The gatekeepers' role was important for the audience to be able to decide which work to spend their time and money on. Historically, the high costs of production caused the gatekeeper's job to be amalgamated to that of the financier. So capital has always had control over what or who gets seen and heard. The advent of print technology revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge and made mass learning and readership possible. But the high input costs put a limit to the extent of democratization. In an effort to guarantee the financier's right to profit, the intellectual property regime violates others' rights like right of subsistence, livelihood, community knowledge (Chandra 2009, 88). Beyond modern society knowledge once produced was always considered to belong to the public domain by default. Though a certain text may have been attributed to Vyaasa, or Kalidas, or Namdev, it never prevented others from reciting the verses. The possible user was not obliged to hunt out Namdev's publishers to seek permission to sing his songs. If copyright had been as pan- optical as threatens to be today many of Rabindranath Tagore's songs would have different tunes, including the Indian national anthem. Today, with virtual publishing and online distribution of intellectual goods we stand at the threshold of another revolution. With digital technology and the internet it is possible to bridge the traditional hiatus between the author and producer. It is possible for the artist to become the producer and distributor of her own works. The role of the gatekeeper need no longer be amalgamated to that of the financier. No longer is a copy imperfect. In the digital world the copy and the original are one and the same. But the threat of non-realisation of this potential is real. The threat comes from established media and software giants who have sought to limit the liberating potential of the digital technologies. Software and hardware monopolies, like Microsoft have created nexus through which hardware comes preloaded with a certain software – and we all thought capitalism is about choice! They talk of Windows and Gates while all they develop are walls and fences! In the recent past we have seen numerous instances of legal and political actions to limit digital technologies – such as the take down notice on the hugely popular digital book archive library.nu, the temporary ban on internet sharing sites caused by the John Doe served by the Madras High Court to prevent the sharing of the immensely popular Kolaveri Di video. These actions should be seen as attempts by the owners of the means of communication to prevent the democratisation of communication and creativity. Today more and more content is being generated through collaborative effort than ever before. On the one hand there is content which is collaboratively produced and collectively owned. The media wikis, like wikipedia and wikimapia, work on the collaborative Creative Commons model for open-access encyclopedias and maps. On the other hand is the attempt by large corporations like Google, Facebook and Apple to harness this enormous collective energy to further their profit by maintaining control over the means of production and distribution of digital content. While the free distribution of pamphlets in the 17th century London Coffee Houses, is emulated by the Web 2.0 platforms like blogs, video-sharing, online communities have fueled an entire method to challenge the powers that be. The web-sharing platform has been used to co-ordinate activities of various groups during the protests against imperialist globalization. Free sharing of posters, pictures, videos, case studies have strengthened the understanding of activists from various parts of the world and equipped them to confront their immediate realities. Certain governments have reacted in the manner of Charles II in restricting the internet. In this task the governments are aptly aided by the privately owned online media companies and internet service providers who have displayed a willingness to comply with take down notices. So while on the one hand governments and judiciary take steps to ensure the continued monopoly of the media companies by ever strengthening intellectual property laws, the media companies willingly submit to the political overlords to reign in dissident opinion. This partnership between copyright and censorship which started eversince Queen Mary's proclamation of The Royal Charter of the Company of Stationers in 1557 continues today through attempts to legislate stricter intellectual property laws like Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). 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