JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE, AND THE TRAP OF INHALT (CONTENT) AND FORM

Abstract

In the digital environment, copyright law has become trapped in an assessment of what has been taken, rather than what has been done with copied materials and elements. This expands the scope of copyright into areas where it should not find infringement (such as sampling, mash-ups and other transformative uses) while encouraging activities that are problematic (such as hiding sources). This article argues that the trap was laid by the German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte whose influential 1793 article ‘Proof of the Unlawfulness of Reprinting’ for the first time distinguishes Inhalt (i.e. content free to all) and Form (i.e. the author's inalienable expression) as copyright categories. It is shown that Fichte's structure conflates norms of communication and norms of transaction. An alternative path for copyright law in an information society is sketched from a separation of these norms: copying should be assessed from (i) the attribution of sources, and (ii) the degree to which original and derivative materials compete with each other. Throughout the article, transformative practices in music set the scene.

Keywords:

• Copyright
• idea-expression dichotomy
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte
• musical work
• performance
• adaptation
• sampling

Acknowledgments

The first section and some examples in the third section draw on our joint article ‘DJing, Coverversionen und andere ‘produktive Nutzungen’ – Warum die Kategorien des Musikurheberrechts der Musikpraxis nicht mehr gerecht werden', UFITA 2007/II (also published in Wissen and Eigentum, ed. J. Hofmann, Bonn 2006); the second section uses material from Kawohl's paper ‘Form as thing v form as expression’ presented at the fourth International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Tampere, 2002; the third section introduces one of several reworkings of a model first presented at the AHRC/ESRC Cultural Industries seminar in Bournemouth (16 September 2005) under the title ‘Quotation in music’. We subsequently also tried it out in seminars at Universität Leipzig (Propertization: An interdisciplinary research programme, 27 January 2006) and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Inspiration, Interpretation or Infringement?, 4 July 2007). Throughout, we have benefited from discussions in the editors' group of the project Primary Sources on Copyright (www.copyrighthistory.org): Lionel Bently, Oren Bracha, Ronan Deazley, Joanna Kostylo and Frédéric Rideau. Finally, many thanks to Christian von Borries (composer, producer, conductor – Berlin), for discussions of transformative practices in music. The authors are cited in alphabetical order, and contributed equally to the argument advanced.

Notes

The evolution of copyright case law and statutes in the key jurisdictions is much more complex than our distinction between ‘what has been taken’, and ‘what has been done to it’ suggests. Yet, current UK law is a good illustration of a broad trend. To be sure, the University of London case is not uncontroversial. For example, Lord Justice Jacob suggests in Nova v. Mazooma (2007) that findings of copying ‘are the starting point for a finding of infringement, not the end point’ (at 26). ‘Otherwise it would require the copying of insubstantial parts to be an infringement – which is so absurd as to be assuredly wrong’ (at 29). Contrast the misappropriation doctrine in the leading infringement decision from the highest UK court (House of Lords). According to Designer Guild v. Russell Williams (2002), the infringement test for ‘altered copying’ assesses whether the defendant is using the claimant's skill and labour. If there are sufficient similarities between original and alleged copy, a ‘substantial part’ question may not even be asked.

The original German wording from Mattheson's book Der vollkommene Kapellmeister (literally, The Complete Chapel-Master) reads (1739, p. 131): ‘Entlehnen ist eine erlaubte Sache; man muss aber das Entlehnte mit Zinsen erstatten, d.i. man muss die Nachahmungen so einrichten und ausarbeiten, daß sie ein schöneres und besseres Ansehen gewinnen, als die Sätze, aus welcher sie entlehnet sind.’ All translations in this article are the authors' own.

The tension between originality and imitation became a lasting problem of romantic theory: how could one distinguish originality from contrived folly? As Schlegel (1991 1797, p. 52) puts it: ‘The greater the already existing mass of originality, the rarer becomes new true originality’.

Barron (2006b, p. 114) cites the eminent jurists William Blackstone (argument for the plaintiff in Tonson v. Collins –1762) and Lord Mansfield (the judge in Millar v. Taylor – 1769). Mansfield on the object of literary property is quoted with ‘somewhat intellectual, communicated by letters’ ‘detached from the manuscript or any other physical existence whatsoever’. Deazley (2008a, commentary on Tonson v. Collins) even ascribes to Blackstone a ‘tripartite understanding of the work’ – the physical book, the ideas conveyed in that book, and the composition (according to Blackstone: ‘those words in which an author has clothed his ideas’).

For the next 100 years, Britain's copyright laws remained ambivalent, preserving a series of specific laws regulating specific subject matter, such as engravings, sculptures, designs, paintings, drawings and photographs (Sherman & Bently 1999) – although the 1842 Copyright Act and the Fine Art Copyright Act (1862) moved towards an abstract work identity for literary, dramatic, musical works and artistic works (Seville 1999; Kawohl & Kretschmer 2003; Deazley 2008b). The United States followed the narrow incentive approach of the Statute of Anne well into the twentieth century, but here too the concept of an abstract work found its way into court decision on derivative works (Folsom v. Marsh 1841; cf. Bracha 2008).

A related passage of Krause's treatise is cited in Woodmansee (1984, p. 443).

This echoes Immanuel Kant's 1785 essay ‘Of the Illegality of Reprinting’ (Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks) which Fichte claims not to have known when he first devised his ‘form’ argument (1793, p. 472).

Oren Bracha (2008, commentary on Folsom v. Marsh (1841)) argues that although the dichotomy in twentieth-century American copyright law was often used to construct the ‘fair use’ doctrine, nineteenth-century readings supported the expansion of the scope of copyright law.

The term ‘bemächtigen’ most naturally would translate as ‘appropriate’, but ‘taking as property’ is precisely what Fichte claims cannot be done to an author's form.

There is now a large literature in law, ethnomusicology and cultural studies on the phenomenon (Bently 1989; Seeger 1992; McLeod 2001; Théberge 2004; Hesmondhalgh 2006). More recent court decisions, notably the German federal court's decision on the sampling of Kraftwerk's Metall auf Metall (2008) have become more permissive, moving towards the analysis we advocate in Figure 2.

Traces of such economically minded thinking can be found in some pre-1800 jurisprudence (e.g. Gyles v. Wilcox 1741 – tolerating abridgements), and in the development of ‘fair use’ defences to copyright infringement in many jurisdictions during the nineteenth century. For an economic analysis of modern ‘fair use’ in the USA, see Gordon (1982) and Landes & Posner (1989).

Reimarus, the addressee of Fichte's paper, had argued for a right to be recognized as the author that would not implicate an exclusive right. Fichte dismissed this approach (1793, pp. 451–452): [‘Hieraus fließen zwei Rechte der Schriftsteller: nehmlich nicht bloß, wie Herr R. will, das Recht zu verhindern, daß Niemand ihm überhaupt das Eigenthum dieser Form abspreche (zu fordern, daß jeder ihn für den Verf. des Buchs anerkenne); sondern auch das Recht, zu verhindern, daß Niemand in sein ausschließendes Eigenthum dieser Form Eingriffe thue, und sich des Besitzes derselben bemächtige.’]