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Negotiating copyright: Authorship and the discourse of literary property rights in nineteenth-century America (James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson).

Buinicki, Martin Thomson, Jr.
Thesis (Ph.D.)–The University of Iowa, 2003.
online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium

Summary
“Negotiating Copyright: Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century America” examines how debates over copyright law in the United States during the nineteenth century, particularly over the lack of an international copyright law, intersected with the business practices and political and artistic beliefs of American authors. These debates shaped a discourse of literary property rights that forced authors to negotiate their copyrights not only with their publishers, but with their readers as well. Employing the overlapping issues and terms discussed in newspaper editorials, legislative sessions, and the public and private writing of James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Clemens, and Emily Dickinson, this dissertation demonstrates how authors found themselves in an uneasy opposition to their reading public. Authors were forced to stake their claim to their rights as property holders while at the same time fending off criticism that literary works should be easily and cheaply available within the rapidly expanding American literary marketplace. As a result, the act of taking out a copyright was more than a mere legal mechanism marking a transition from amateur to professional or artist to businessperson. Taking out a copyright had a profound impact on how audiences viewed authors, how authors perceived their profession, and how they represented individual rights and property ownership within their texts.

A long journey toward intellectual property protection [electronic resource] : A case study of Taiwan’s copyright law reform (China).

Thesis (Ph.D.)–University of Missouri – Columbia, 2001.
online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium

Summary
This study examines the development of copyright protection in Taiwan, from cultural, political, historical and legal points of view and from a variety of sources, including in-depth personal interviews with government officials, lawyers, scholars and officers of intellectual property protection organizations who have either participated in Taiwan’s copyright reform or in the copyright negotiations with the United States. This study also explores underlying factors behind Taiwan’s copyright revolution from the perspectives of press theories and intellectual property theories.
 The author finds that copyright infringement of foreign and domestic works were rampant in Taiwan throughout the second half of the twentieth century because of several historical factors: political, legal, and economic concerns. But lack of the concept of copyright or intellectual property in general in the society was the underpinning factor. In other words, there has been a huge cultural difference between the West and Taiwan in the aspect of intellectual property protection throughout the history of their respective civilizations. This helps explain why copyright piracy was not a concern among the Taiwanese citizens and the Taiwan government until the United States started to pressure Taiwan for improvement with the threat of trade sanctions. Forces behind Taiwan’s copyright reform included external/foreign pressure as well as internal/domestic forces.
 In addition to providing a comprehensive history and analysis of the copyright dispute between the United States and Taiwan and creating a whole new understanding of Taiwan’s copyright reform and the copyright disputes between the two nations, this study also reveals that underlying the comprehensive history of the copyright disputes between the United States and Taiwan, there are the missing elements within the literature about policy toward intellectual property rights in a free or controlled press/speech system. And those elements are important in helping scholars more comprehensively understand how each press/speech system is conceived and operates.
 Most previous literature that discusses free and controlled press systems does not comprehensively explain the importance of intellectual property rights within each tradition. This study suggests that literature should include more intellectual property rights traditions in understanding both press/speech systems.