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16 Colum.-VLA J.L. & Arts 1 (1991-1992)
The 1992 Horace S. Manges Lecture - People or Machines: The Bern Convention and the Changing Concept of Authorship

handle is hein.journals/cjla16 and id is 11 raw text is: The 1992 Horace S. Manges Lecture - People or Machines: The Berne Convention and the Changing Concept of Authorship* by Sam Ricketson INTRODUCTION Talk of crisis and upheaval has marked recent discussions and debates on the current state and future prospects of national and international copyright laws. The language of metaphor has always been popular, as commentators have sought to describe the challenges that confront cre- ators of literary and artistic works. One highly experienced observer has spoken of Disquieting Reports from the Maginot Line of Authors' Copyright.' Another, Professor Kernochan, the organizer of the present lecture, has remarked bleakly, One feels that darkness may descend at any moment in this area.2 The pervading impression is one of gloom and doom, as the defenders of authors' rights, like King Canute of old, try vainly to hold back the rising tide of modernity and the encroach- ments of the machine age. The language of Sturm und Drang, however, should not blind us to the fact that the crisis is a real, not imagined, one. Copyright law, both at the national and international level, is now at a very critical stage in its development. This is not to deny that there have been other significant crisis points in its existence-the struggle between developed and This is a revised version of the lecture which I delivered at Columbia University on February 25, 1992. The revisions, and some additional material, have been incorporated, following the very helpful suggestions and criticisms made by Professor Jane Ginsburg and some of the students in her J.D. copyright course while I was still at Columbia in the days following the lecture. However, the central thesis put forward in the lecture remains unchanged. ' Sir Keith Aickin Professor of Company Law, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. © 1991 by Sam Ricketson 1. Mihhly Ficsor, Disquieting Report from the Maginot Line of Authors: Technological Progress and Crisis Tendencies in Copyright, 18 COPYRIGHT 104 (1982). See also to similar effect: David Ladd, To Cope with the World Upheaval in Copyright, 19 COPYRIGHT 289 (1983); Andr6 Kerever, Is Copyright an Anachronism? 19 COPYRIGHT 368 (1983); Walter Dillenz, What Is and To Which End Do We Engage in Copyright? 12 COLuM.-VLA J.L. & ARTS 1 (1987). 2. John M. Kernochan, Imperatives for Enforcing Authors'Rights, 11 COLUM.-VLA J.L. & ARTS 587 (1987).

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