ABSTRACT
This exploration of the role of authorship in copyright law proceeds in three parts: historical, doctrinal, and predictive. First, I will review the development of authorfocused property rights in the pre-copyright regimes of printing privileges and in early Anglo-American copyright law through the 1909 US Copyright Act. Second, I will analyze the extent to which the present US copyright law does (and does not) honor human authorship. Finally, I will consider the potential responses of copyright law to the claims of proprietary rights in AI-generated outputs. I will explain why the humanist orientation of US copyright law validates the position of the Copyright Office and the courts that the output of an AI system will not be a ‘work of authorship’ unless human participation has determinatively caused the creation of the output.
Ginsburg, Jane C, Humanist Copyright (March 07, 2025). Forthcoming, 6 Journal of Free Speech Law (2025).
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