The Piratical Enlightenment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23606558 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adrian Johns (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Pages | 301-320 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | This Is Enlightenment (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.7208/chicago/9780226761466.003.0016 |
| OpenAlex | W4243579288 |
| ISBN | 9780226761466 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This chapter shows how eighteenth-century German states, as net importers of intellectual property, found that piracy—the free reproduction of books first published by others—could support the Enlightenment ideal of free and open access to knowledge. However, the ensuing debate about the comparative value of a restricted copyright (the English system) and liberal reprinting (German piracy) not only implicates the mediation of Enlightenment (where piracy offers robust circulation of knowledge) but also bears upon what became the most important positive rational for seeing writing as an expression of the self: the idea that the writer is a genius, whose distinct form of thought emerges from a unique self. Ownership in the form of copyright became the primary way of instituting this connection between writing and genius.
Aesthetics · Art · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Genius · German · Ideal (ethics) · Intellectual property · Law and economics · Linguistics · Literature · Mediation · Political science · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Computer Science · Freedom of Expression and Defamation · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |