Voices near and far: Introduction

The goal of this introduction is to ‘set the stage’ so to speak for the various explorations that follow, of notions of collaborative authorship and original works in academic thought, societal practice and as legal norms. To provide especially the readership not familiar with copyright lawmaking with a useful backdrop, what follows is a characterisation of the current state of copyright law in Europe. I shall briefly describe the role of the EU as primary actor in copyright reform. We can then sketch what the pertinent questions are on authorship and copyright subject-matter, a.k.a. original intellectual creations, and how the authors of each chapter have addressed these. The contributions in this volume all borrow from different disciplines. This introduction concludes with some observations on the many voices in academia that speak on creative practices, and on their relative proximity to copyright scholarship. Although technology and economics will continue to drive developments in intellectual property law, humanities research can (and should) have real impact on the quality of law and legal interpretation.