Method and Madness in Copyright Law

Copyright law is a source of nearly endless scholarly fascination because of the paradoxes, the absurdities, the contradictions in its doctrines. Lewis Carroll's White Queen had nothing on copyright law. Copyright asks us to accept far more than six impossible, almost nonsensical assertions as part of its standard doctrine. Copyright asks us to believe, for example, that creative works have an existence independent of their embodiment that corporations, rather than people, can author documents that computer code is a literary work, like poetry or novels that artists have a special propensity to bungle their business affairs.

The list seems nearly endless.