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| Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,” T. S. Eliot once observed. It is unlikely that this insight, pithy1) and eloquent though it is, would be of much use during any intellectual property dispute. Corporations guard their assets jealously. The realities of competition mean that complacency2) about patents and copyright could be fatal. It is fine for artists to joke about plagiarism. Business leaders rarely do. If you attended the Association of American Publishers?annual conference in New York last week, you will have seen a senior corporate executive having a major sense-of-humour failure. Thomas Rubin, Microsoft’s associate general counsel for copyright, trademark and trade secrets — what a job title — told delegates that Google’s aim of becoming the key global source of information and content was leading it into morally dubious3) behaviour. Mr Rubin portrayed Google as a kind of commercial parasite, creating no content of its own and making money on the back of other people’s work. He quoted Pat Schroeder, AAP chief executive, approvingly: Google had, Ms Schroeder said recently, “a hell of a4) business model — they誶e going to take everything you create, for free, and sell advertising around it”. This approach, Mr Rubin said, “systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines5) incentives to create”. Ouch. This sounds a long way from Google’s original stated aim—“Do no evil”. And, of course, the truth is more complicated. It is doubtful that most web surfers would recognise Google in Mr Rubin’s vituperative6) description. Google is popular and valued because it works. Its success is beginning to scare a lot of companies, including media companies, says Kevin Werbach, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton business school. “[But] the media companies want and need Google, because Google is extraordinarily good at the two things that underlie most media businesses: directing users to content, and matching advertisers to users.” A bigger, more important (and more paradoxical) question arises. What is “original content” anyway? Shakespeare hardly invented a plot line. Most of his plays were drawn from historical fact or well-known fable. Was the premiere7) of The Comedy of Errors interrupted by a cry of: “Oh, come off it, Will, this is just reheated Plautus”? No, it was not. What we now call the Renaissance was, in French literary circles, also known as “La Restitution des Lettres”: the restoration or reproduction of classical learning. If Racine8) chose to write his own version of Euripedes9)’s Hippolytus — as he did —it was no rip-off10) or piece of cultural parasitism. To imitate was to be creative and, yes, original. We still labour under a rather romantic (that is, Romantic) notion of what creativity and originality look like. We picture the lonely figure experiencing a eureka11) moment and, from nothing, creating something completely and utterly new. |
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