Who invented Oscar Wilde? : the photograph at the center of modern american copyright

AAP PROSE Award, Finalist in Media and Culture Studies 2021 In early 1882, before young Oscar Wilde embarked on his lecture tour across America, he posed for publicity photos taken by a famously eccentric New York photographer named Napoleon Sarony. Few would guess that one of those photographs would become the subject of the Supreme Court case that challenged copyright protection for all photography—a constitutional question that asked how a machine-made image could possibly be a work of human creativity. Who Invented Oscar Wilde? is a story about the nature of authorship and the "convenient fiction" we call copyright. While a seemingly obscure topic, copyright has been a hotly contested issue almost since the day the internet became publicly accessible. The presumed obsolescence of authorial rights in this age of abundant access has fueled a debate that reaches far beyond the question of compensation for authors of works. Much of the literature on the subject is either highly academic, highly critical of copyright, or both. With a light and balanced touch, David Newhoff makes a case for intellectual property law, tracing the concept of authorship from copyright's ancient beginnings to its adoption in American culture to its eventual confrontation with photography and its relevance in the digital age. Newhoff tells a little-known story that will appeal to a broad spectrum of interests while making an argument that copyright is an essential ingredient to upholding the principles on which liberal democracy is founded. In early 1882, before young Oscar Wilde embarked on his lecture tour across America, he posed for publicity photos taken by a famously eccentric New York photographer named Napoleon Sarony. Few would guess that one of those photographs would become the subject of the Supreme Court case that challenged copyright protection for all photography—a constitutional question that asked how a machine-made image could possibly be a work of human creativity. Who Invented Oscar Wilde? is a story about the nature of authorship and the “convenient fiction” we call copyright. While a seemingly obscure topic, copyright has been a hotly contested issue almost since the day the internet became publicly accessible. The presumed obsolescence of authorial rights in this age of abundant access has fueled a debate that reaches far beyond the question of compensation for authors of works. Much of the literature on the subject is either highly academic, highly critical of copyright, or both. With a light and balanced touch, David Newhoff makes a case for intellectual property law, tracing the concept of authorship from copyright’s ancient beginnings to its adoption in American culture to its eventual confrontation with photography and its relevance in the digital age. Newhoff tells a little-known story that will appeal to a broad spectrum of interests while making an argument that copyright is an essential ingredient to upholding the principles on which liberal democracy is founded. ' On December 14, 1883, a short article in the New York Times featured the headline, "Did Sarony Invent Oscar Wilde?" It was a sarcastic reference to opening arguments presented the day before at the U.S. Supreme Court in Burrow-Giles Lithographic v. Sarony over the infringement of Napoleon Sarony's photograph, Oscar Wilde No. 18.0Beginning with a lighthearted overview of copyright history, from the so-called first copyright case in sixth-century Ireland to the establishment of copyright in the new United States, David Newhoff orients the reader toward a basic understanding of pretechnological copyright law. In telling the story of Sarony's own development as an artist, Newhoff presents an underexamined biography concurrent with the development of the photographic medium itself. Sarony's personal development from lithographer to photographer represents a broader historic transition, from a time when social, political, and current events were conveyed through manual image-making to the first era when these events were depicted by machine-made images assumed to represent infallible truth. The shift in the way people perceived the world by the 1880s warrants fresh consideration in the context of the various effects of social media and the omnipresence of cameras capturing trillions of moments - from profoundly important events to mundane intimacies that might be better left undocumented Who Invented Oscar Wilde? provides a framework for understanding the development and purpose of creators' rights in the United States PHO010000 Photography / History,LAW050010 Law / Intellectual Property / Copyright,LAW060000 Law / Legal History Provides a perspective for understanding the development and purpose of creators' rights in the United States.