Your Work and Who Owns It
By Linus Kafka
While driving to the office some time ago, I heard a radio interview with a rap music performer. He enjoyed some local prominence in New York in the late '70s. Once, he lent his book of lyrics to a fellow performer—a practice he indicated was quite common in the early days of rap. That artist's lyrics were "Rapper's Delight," the first hip-hop song to break the popular music Top 40 list. The song brought fame and money to the artist who recorded it. When asked what he thought about the success of his lyrics as played by a fellow performer, the musician said, "I feel poor."
Defining Intellectual Property
What does the hindsight of an obscure rap musician have to do with you and your work? Everything. Every day you work with the tangible product of your—or some other person's—creative energy (see "
What Is A Work?"). This energy might not be Top 40 material, but Grandmaster Caz has no more entitlement to legal protection than Webmaster Bob. Lawyers have a name for the relationship between people and their creative output: intellectual property. You've probably heard this term many times, but may not have considered the implications hidden in the phrase. The term suggests two very important and abstract notions. The first is that there's a type of property that may not have a physical presence. And the second is that this "something" without a physical presence can be owned.<>
