Discontinuities between legal conceptions of authorship and social practices: What, if anything, is to be done?

Authorship is central to the operation of copyright as a regulatory tool, but copyright law’s conception of ‘authorship’ appears to be ‘out of sync’ with a wide range of social practices: either copyright makes authors-in-law out of social ‘non-authors’, or vice versa. After offering three examples (scientific credit, conceptual art and literary editing)1 this contribution considers why these differences have emerged and whether these discontinuities should be thought of as a matter of concern. It appraises a number of academic proposals as to what might be done about these discontinuities, and offers its own suggestion, namely, the deployment of a more open-textured concept of authorship, one that is able to respond flexibly to varied contexts, social understandings and practices, but limited in application to matters of attribution.