Journal articles on the topic 'Copyright Act 1968'

This article discusses the likely Australian copyright implications of an increasingly popular form of digital music expression: the music mash-up, a majority of which are created from pre-existing audio/sound recordings and video without permission of the copyright owner. In examining this issue, the analysis of the courts in the recent Larrikin music copyright infringement cases are examined. Consideration of the implications of music mash-up creation to moral rights is also considered. In the hypothetical scenario that a music mash-up artist is accused of copyright infringement, consideration is given as to the likely outcome of the application of the fair dealing exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Finally, a suggestion is made as to the direction of future law reform in this area.

The role of I.S.P. or Intermediary is very important for effective utilization of information technology. The liability of Intermediary or I.S.P. has gain immense importance at international level. Various countries have defined the liability of I.S.P. either in the form of copyright infringement or for the infringement of information technology. Australia was the first country to enact the legislation relating to the liability aspect of I.S.P. in the form of Copyright Act, 1968 making I.S.P. liable to disable the access to online services hosted outside Australia. Some safe harbors were also provided for I.S.P. as part of the Australia - United States Free Trade Agreement. The US provides for the liability of ISP in the form of Communications Decency Act, 1996, Digital Millennium Copyright Act,1998. Title II of the D.M.C.A. specifically deals with the issue of I.S.P. liability and also provides for the penalties for unauthorized access to a copyright work. As regarding the legislations of Canada, it does not specifically defines the liability of I.S.P., instead it provides safe harbor for those ISP’s providing any means for Internet access. I.S.P.’s are also protected for copyright infringement in Canada. In Singapore the liability of I.S.P. is regulated by the Internet class license and Internet code of Practice which requires the I.S.P. to abide by the conditions of license. I.S.P.’s are also restricted to make public access of those websites which contain offensive content harmful to national interest. Japan’s Copyright Act, 1970, The Provider Liability Limitation Law 2002 protects the I.S.P. against any kind of liability for Copyright infringement. UK enacted two legislations in form of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Digital Economy Act 2010 which imposes the obligations on ISP to notify the infringement to its subscribers, also liable to take technical measures to terminate the Internet services after reporting of infringement. The countries also make the provisions for the penalties for offences relating to the infringement of copyright or unauthorized access of information by various I.S.P.’s or Intermediaries. The quantum of punishment is differed in every country according to the nature of offence.

The absence of the doctrine of fair use from Australian copyright law has been a bone of contention in Australia after the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA). As the Australian government reformed the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) in the aftermath of the FTA it eschewed the option of adopting fair use. Instead, Australia chose to incorporate a version of fair use into its existing fair dealing framework. Accordingly, the Copyright Amendment Act 2006 (Cth) inserted ss 41A and 103AA into the Copyright Act. These provisions provide that a fair dealing with a copyright protected work does not constitute an infringement if it is done for the purposes of parody or satire. These provisions codify part of the ratio of the United States Supreme Court in the seminal case of Campbell v Acuff Rose Music. However, the parameters of these new provisions are unexplored and the sparse nature of fair dealing jurisprudence means that the true meaning of the provisions is unclear. Moreover, two cases from the United States, SunTrust Bank v Houghton Mifflin and Salinger v Colting, underline just how important it is to have legal rules that protect literary ‘re-writes’. Both cases involved authors using an original novel to ‘write back’ to the original author and the broader culture. ‘Writing back’ or the ‘re-write’ has a firm basis in literature. It adds something invaluable to our culture. The key question is whether our legal landscape can allow it to flourish. This paper examines the interaction between fair use and literary re-writes.

This article examines how moral rights are treated in Australian publishing contracts, and whether this approach is consistent with the expectations of authors, journalists and academics. Although, in theory, moral rights cannot be sold or assigned in Australia, the apparent wide scope for exceptions raises questions of whether there is any real protection afforded to creators under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), notably in circumstances that relate to pressure on creators to accept contractual terms in order to get published. Additionally, Australian case law reflects some uncertainty about the traditionally accepted non-economic nature of moral rights. The article examines recent case law in this field, found in Meskenas, Perez and Corby, and considers the literature associated with development of moral rights in Australia. It then presents the findings of a two-part study of moral rights in Australia; first through the results of interviews with 176 Australian authors, journalists and academics, followed by an analysis of 20 publishing contracts. It concludes that — in some, but not all, instances — a combination of the exceptions allowed under the Act and practical exigencies have diluted the unique character of authors’ moral rights and have created an environment of uncertainty.

Choreographic work was the object of copyright protection under the Berne Convention, as revised at Berlin in 1908, as well as under the historical Polish copyright legislations — the 1926 Act (as an original, “not based on any existing work of art” work of “rhythmic art (choreography)”) and the 1952 Act (as a “work of choreographic art” preserved in “scenarios, drawings or photographs”). It was also included, as a “choreographic work”, in the exemplary catalogue of works protected under the Act of 4 February 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights (“the Copyright Act”), currently in force. The purpose of this paper, due to limited framework, is to analyse some basic concepts related to the conditions that a movement composition shall meet in order to qualify as a choreographic work in the meaning of the Copyright Act. It is shown based on the polonaise from the film Pan Tadeusz, directed by Andrzej Wajda. This choice allows to introduce threads related to folklore as well as the use of unprotected pieces of the public domain in choreographies into the discussion. Moreover, the article briefly presents the correlation between choreographic work and other intellectual works — literary, musical, and audiovisual.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the legal and institutional frameworks for, and the challenges to the payment of the reprographic fees in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach was employed to address the objectives of the study. This involved focus group discussion sessions with twelve purposively sampled postgraduate students (six each from the private and public institutions) and the five Technical Committee members of CopyGhana; and qualitative interview sessions with the head librarians of four academic universities (two private and two public).FindingsThis study shows that CopyGhana derives its existence from Copyright Act 2005, (Act 690) section 49, and Copyright Regulations (L.I. 1962) 2010, sub-regulation 18. Copyright Regulations (L.I. 1962), 2010, sub-regulation 18 mandates CopyGhana to identify all the outfits that engage in photocopying for immediate licensing, and to protect the economic rights of foreign rightsholders within the jurisdiction of Ghana. Though students and library staff generally agree to the payment of the reprographic fees (the students however want to see it legally insulated against possible future arbitrary increases), the position of university authorities possesses a big challenge to its implementation.Originality/valueThe paper evaluated the legal and institutional frameworks for the payment of the reprographic fees, and the challenges in its implementation, and proposes that CopyGhana may have to activate its legal right to sue in order to overcome the challenges posed by university authorities, as is being done in other jurisdictions.

The characterization of payments, for taxation, in the hands of, non-resident payees arising out of a cross-border sale of software, has always remained controversial in India. While the Revenue, contends that such payments are ‘Royalties’ for Licensing of, Copyrights, the taxpayers argue that these payments are merely, Proceeds on the Sales of Copyrighted Articles. There have been, several conflicting decisions by different Income Tax Tribunals, and High Courts that have legitimized each of these characterizations., While the Courts and Tribunals led by the Delhi, HC held for the taxpayers by characterizing these payments as, Proceeds of Sales, the Courts and Tribunals led by the, Karnataka HC held for the Revenue. Therefore, albeit in, different jurisdictions within the country, a dichotomy persisted. In an attempt to resolve this dichotomy, the Government, of India introduced a clarificatory amendment to the Indian, Income Tax Act, 1961 in 2012. However, the conflict persisted, as the amendment did not clarify and could not have, clarified the status of these payments under the Double, Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) As a result, the, dichotomy, now limited to Non-Resident Payees whose resident, jurisdiction has a DTAA with India, still prevailed. These, jurisdictions include several Commonwealth nations such as the, UK, Australia, Malaysia, Canada, etc. and Ireland, which is, the most preferred jurisdiction to operate from for almost all the, tech corporations in the world. Therefore, this dichotomy still, affects the tax liability of the residents of these jurisdictions and, their ease of doing business with India. In this article, the author will highlight that the dichotomy,, though existent, has no basis in law. The author will, highlight that the characterization of these payments as has been, contended by the Revenue is the only legitimate characterization., This characterization not only draws support from the, established Rules of Statutory Interpretation but also promotes, the ease of doing business in India. Agreement, Consideration, Copyright, Double-Tax, Income Tax, Licensing, Literary, Payment, Royalty, Resident

The article deals with international law aspects of the GCL. To this aim firstly the international conventions on copyright law are analyzed, in particular: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in the wording of the Paris Act of 1971, the Convention on the Establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization of 1967, the Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations of 1961 and Aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) 1994. There is also an analysis of the EU copyright law in terms of its correlation with the law of the EU member-states and an assessment of its evolution. It is emphasized that the core fact of origin of authorship is determined on the basis of the national legislation of the Member-States. Special attention is paid to the scope of the “principle of exhausted rights”. The article also touches upon the aspect of private international law. Particular attention is paid to the legal regulation of the Internet, including Internet providers, and its impact on the formation of the GCL. The problem of combating Internet piracy is also raised, as copyright infringement often occurs in relation to works published online. In addition, the article revealed what changes were made to the GCL to comply with EU law (including secondary law acts and the practice of the EU Court). The result of the study is, among other things, the conclusion that special legal mechanisms should be developed to regulate new forms of selling works that have emerged as a result of technological progress and in the near future the Internet will undoubtedly form ways for the further development of the GCL. However, this process can negatively affect the leading role of the author as a creative person.

The protection of moral rights embraces the now widespread personal sphere of copyright and originated much later than the economic exploitation of the work itself. Some of its components can be found in the English and German thought between the 17th and 18th centuries and, starting from the early 19th century, would have a substantial development through the contribution of both the French legal scholarship and case law. The legal foundations, in any case, date back to some codifications of the German area and to the earliest international treaties, making it a discipline that did not take into consideration the extent of the national territory. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relevance of the European models and their influence in Italy after the national Unification, in particular in the first decades of the 1900s. In fact, the international protection of moral rights takes root in Italy during the 1928 Rome Conference for the revision of the 1886 Berne Convention. The United States joined it only later, in 1989, with the Berne Convention Implementation Act (BCIA). Thirty years later, the Copyright Office published in April 2019 an extensive study about the American protection of moral rights. The document is studied in this paper in comparison with the European Directives and with the Copyright Directive definitively approved a few days before the Copyright Office document. While in the USA the interest in moral rights up to now rather limited seems to be increasing, in Europe the protection of moral rights risks being waned as it is handed down to individual countries with the explicit declaration that it is not the subject matter of the Directives. Moral rights, origins, codification, Europe, Italy, Berne Convention, international treaties, USA, EU Directives, Canada

Reborn in 1918, the Polish state inherited from the partition countries: Russia, Prussia and Austria their legal systems. The task of unifying the codification of the law was entrusted to the Codification Commission, established on the basis of the Act of 1919. The Commission was to prepare draft legislation in the field of civil and criminal law. It was a body of 44 lawyers and had a high degree of independence from political factors. As a result of the Commission’s work, more than 20 legal acts were created. In the area of civil law, these were laws mainly related to foreign legal transactions. These included, among others, bills of exchange and cheque law, copyright law, patent law, law on combating unfair competition. The two laws of 1926 were of particular importance: private international law and inter-district law. Three codes of private law were also created: the Code of Obligations (1933, considered the most outstanding civil work of the Commission), the Commercial Code and the Code of Civil Procedure. In the area of criminal law, a full codification was carried out, first by implementing the Code of Criminal Procedure (1928) and then the Criminal Code (1932). These two acts were based on different doctrinal bases, which made criminal law inconsistent. The Criminal Code of Juliusz Makarewicz in particular was an outstanding work, based on the findings of the School of Sociological Criminal Law. The Codification Commission did not finish its work until the outbreak of the war. However, present codes are largely based on the solutions developed within the Commission.

The article analyzes the features of the legal regulation of intellectual property in Ukraine, in particular in the Ukrainian lands of Austria and Austria-Hungary (1772-1918). The author shows that the main source of legal regulation of civil relations, in particular intellectual property, in Galicia as part of Austria and Austria-Hungary (1772–1918) was the Austrian Civil Code of 1811. Property rights under the Austrian Civil Code of 1811 were the right of ownership, the right of possession, the right to pledge, and easements. The author highlights that things were divided into corporeal, disembodied, movable and immovable, used and unused, with price and without price. The bodily things were those perceived by the sense organs. Disembodied things included, first of all, property rights - the right to fish, hunt, and so on. It is shown that in the Austrian Empire for the first time the provisions on the legal regulation of intellectual property were provided for in the Civil Code of 1811 (Articles 1164‒1170). The author shows that the Austrian legal acts of 1846 for the first time regulated the free use of works, including the right of translation, citation. According to the law of 1846, the artist had to reserve the right of reproduction and exercise it for 2 years under the threat of losing his rights. It is emphasized that the presence of Western Ukrainian lands in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in comparison with the previous period of the Commonwealth, contributed to the spiritual progress of the Ukrainian nation, intensified cultural and artistic processes in Ukrainian lands. The author reveals that an important and new normative act in the field of intellectual property regulation was the Austrian Copyright Act for works of literature, art and photography, adopted on December 26, 1895. Attention is focused on the fact that the development of industrial property rights was carried out under the influence of economic development, which in the western Ukrainian lands as part of Austria was slower than in the economically developed regions of Austria, and thus - Austria-Hungary. It is concluded that the development of legal regulation of intellectual property in Galicia as part of Austria and Austria-Hungary (1772-1918) formed a certain experience, which was characterized by the specification of objects, subjects, the definition of intellectual property, the consolidation of copyright and their defense in court.

Our daily life is surrounded by agreements, whether we realize it or not. From breakfast to supper we make a number of agreements, irrespective of our ability to do so. For example, the transfer of property through sale, mortgage, lease, exchange, or gift, the formation of partnerships and companies, performing arbitration, mediation, negotiation and conciliation, registering patents, copyrights, intellectual properties, the execution of negotiable instruments, insurances and various services. When the agreement is made by a competent person then it is recognized and protected by law; while in the case of an incompetent party (particularly a minor) it lacks such recognition and protection by law (vide sections 10 and 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872). A minor's agreement stands void ab initio (Mohiri Bibee, 1903 PC), hence a minor is discharged from the contractual obligations. But under several laws, such as the TPA, the Sales of Goods Act, the Partnership Act, the Companies Act and the Insurance Laws etc. a minor is allowed to be a beneficiary through the contract created thereunder. Though the Indian Contract Act, 1872, does not allow a minor directly to be a beneficiary, even through judicial pronouncements, this gap has been filled. On the contrary the situation is not clear where this minor is fraudulent. Accordingly the consequence of a minor's agreement in terms of nature and effects is not clear under the Indian Contract Act, 1872, or under the Specific Relief Act, 1963. This legislative gap under the Act of 1872was what attracted to the author to do the analytical research deploying doctrinal research methodology applying null hypothesis. This article has been divided into sections. Under section 2 the formal introduction of agreement and contract is discussed with its essentials, section 3 concerns the legislative gap pertaining to the consequences of a minor's agreement, section 4 examines the fulfilment of the legislative gap through judicial pronouncement and section 5 contains the conclusion with suggestions.

COVID-19 has raised many challenges in terms of applying Australian copyright legislation and related policies to higher education context. This paper describes the experience of Copyright Officers at Curtin University and Murdoch University from the initial stages of border-control measures affecting delivery of learning materials to students in China, to the wider disruption of the pandemic with many countries implementing lockdown measures, to the current environment where remote delivery is the “new normal.” The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth of Australia) provides narrow fair dealing exceptions (sections 40 and 41) and broader but more uncertain flexible dealing exceptions (section 200AB), creating a barrier for educators providing access to the information resources needed for teaching, learning, and research. The uncertainty of applying section 200AB was exacerbated by the conditions caused by the pandemic. The authors describe their experiences in providing copyright support during the pandemic as well as how the copyright services adapted to meet requirements.

If contemporary media platforms transform and conflate the relations between professional and amateur creative workers, what might we say about the specificity of their vernacular? This article argues that parody is a key site for the articulation of amateur labour enabled by new patterns of networked production and consumption. Despite its utopian promise of free speech, however, the parodic form is tempered by economic and legal exigencies. Therefore, the essay particularly investigates legislative and policy frameworks that constrain parody discourse. Amendments in 2006 to the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), for example, introduced parody and satire defences allowing greater scope for social critique. Yet recent US legislation preventing online impersonation (such as mock twitter accounts) raises crucial questions about the public domain.

Along with all the other baggage the British brought with them to Port Jackson in 1788 were laws of ownership that were totally foreign to the original inhabitants. The particular law I'll consider here is that of copyright. The result of a few hundred years of evolution, moulded by the common law and acts of Parliament, copyright protects the intellectual property of writers and artists (Saunders). It has three requirements: originality, material form and identifiable author. However, superimposed on the creative practices of the original inhabitants of Australia, copyright has proved a dismal failure. Its inability to continue its evolution means that it does not serve Indigenous Australians, whose creative practices do not fit neatly within its confines. The notions of 'rights' or 'ownership' inherent in current copyright law do not reflect, and are therefore unable to protect, Indigenous intellectual property. The limits of protection are summed up by Janke et al: '[c]ommercial interests are protected … rather than interests pertaining to cultural integrity … [r]ights are valid for a limited period … whereas under Indigenous laws, they exist in perpetuity. Individual notions of ownership are recognised, rather than the Indigenous concept of communal ownership' (Janke 1997). Practical effects of these limitations are the loss of copyright of stories written down or electronically recorded by outsiders, and the absence of special consideration for, or protection of, secret or sacred material (Janke 1997). Mansell notes that Aboriginal intellectual property rights are poorly protected by current laws be they copyright, patent, plant breeders, design laws or trademarks where 'the creative customs and practices of Aborigines' are different to those of whites, who 'emphasise the individual and provide the mechanisms for the commercialisation of an individual's activity. The traditional base of Aboriginal art forms was not created with this in mind' (Mansell 196). Indigenous cultures have their own systems for the protection of intellectual property which are predicated not on the protection of commercial advantage but on the meaning and cultural integrity of the work of art (Janke 1996 15; 1998a 4). Some of these so-called works of art are, in fact, 'law bearers'; these 'Indigenous traditional cultural productions are … legal titles to clan land' (Morris 6). Ignoring this meaning of cultural productions is a little like your bank manager framing your mortgage document or rental agreement for its aesthetic qualities, and evicting you from your house. While copyright law does acknowledge legally-defined entities like corporations or government departments as copyright holders, it is too limited in its definitions to recognise the complex familial relationships and reciprocal responsibilities of Aboriginal society. Under Indigenous laws 'individuals are differentiated in their awareness of elements of the local culture and in the way they make use of those elements depending on such things as their sex, their moiety or skin group, and their initiatory status' (Johnson 10). Given the complex nature of Indigenous attitudes to rights in and ownership of intellectual property, those concerned with questions of fairness in the administration of copyright law must take a new perspective. While copyright law appears, in the main, to have been unable to deal with a system of law which pre-dates it by thousands of years, there have recently been some tentative steps towards a recognition of Indigenous concerns. Golvan, acknowledging that much work needs to be done 'to ensure that the legal system is meaningful to Aboriginal people', sees some aspects of the judgement in the Carpets Case1 which 'show a strong determination to seek to unite Western copyright principles with the need to deal with issues of indigenous cultural harm' (Golvan 10). And, in Foster v Mountford 1976 (discussed below), Justice Muirhead noted that 'revelation of the secrets [contained in the offending book] … may undermine the social and religious stability of [the] hard-pressed community' (quoted in McDonald 24). These examples show some willingness on the part of the courts to take into account matters which fall outside of common law. While there has as yet been very little litigation regarding copyright ownership of written works, there is no reason to assume that this situation will continue. The first case of infringement of Aboriginal copyright to surface in the media occurred in 1966, when David Malangi's painting 'The Hunter' was adapted without permission as part of the design for the new one-dollar note (Johnson 13). Ten years later, the Pitjantjatjara Council was involved in litigation with Dr Mountford, 'an anthropologist who had been given information by the Pitjantjatjara people … in 1940 … about tribal sites and objects, communal legends, secrets, paintings, engravings, drawings and totemic geography' (McDonald 23). Interestingly, this particular case relied not on copyright law but on a breach of confidence as 'the material … was not protected by copyright, being material in which copyright either did not subsist, or in which copyright had expired' (23). This is a good example of the lack of protection afforded by copyright law to intellectual property of religious and spiritual significance.2 At first glance, the implications of the 1992 Mabo land rights case for publishing in Australia today might seem remote. However, some of the implications of this historic case hold the potential for a new approach to intellectual property rights which may actually serve the interests of Indigenous artists and writers. The importance to intellectual property rights of the Mabo decision lies in the fact that 'the Court held that … local law remains in place except to the extent that it may be in conflict with British law, and until it is over-ruled by the colonisers' 3 (McDonald 26). This meant that not only the myth of terra nullius was repudiated, but with it any notion that Australia was 'either a wild and lawless place or a legal blank slate. Indigenous customary law … was thereby given both recognition and validity' (26). Gray goes further than this, and states in relation to native title and Aboriginal art: 'the two in fact are quite inseparable if not exactly the same' (Gray 12). This statement strongly emphasises Morris' concerns expressed above, regarding the diminution of authority of 'cultural productions' when they are perceived as merely artistic objects. Pearson, in discussing Mabo, talks of native title as the 'recognition space' 4 between common law and Aboriginal law (Pearson 154). He points out that Aboriginal law exists, is practised is in fact a 'social reality', and adds that 'it is fictitious to assume that Aboriginal law is extinguished where the common law is unable to recognise that law' 5 (155). Recently the Australian Society of Authors (Heiss) prepared two discussion papers and a checklist for non-Indigenous writers who want to write about Indigenous culture. One of the papers, 'Australian Copyright vs Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights', reiterates the point that the Copyright Act 1968 'as it stands is unsuited to protecting Indigenous culture'. It briefly discusses the desirability of the sharing of copyright between the Indigenous storyteller or informant and their non-Indigenous collaborator an issue I will examine in greater depth in my thesis on cross-cultural editing. A problematic practice, shared copyright deals with 'ownership' in a way that satisfies white or western conceptions but may compromise the Indigenous sense of (Indigenous) communal title to the work. The importance of effective copyright law for Indigenous Australians goes beyond the earning of royalties or the commercial 'ownership' of creative work: it refers to the protection of their cultural heritage (Heiss). One solution suggested by Janke is an amendment to 'the Copyright Act to provide moral rights (rights of attribution, no false attribution and cultural integrity)' (in Heiss). Another possible, though longer term solution, may lie in the way common law itself develops. It has evolved over time, albeit slowly, to suit the needs of the particular environment economic, technological, cultural or other in which it has to operate. As Ginsberg remarks in the context of the introduction of moral rights law to two common law countries, the US and Australia, regarding the gradual adoption of moral rights: 'a Common Law approach to moral rights … slowly builds up to the general principle from gritty examples worked out fact-by-fact. This accretion method is familiar to both our countries' legal approaches' (Ginsberg 34). This same accretion method could be used to change copyright law so that it more adequately protects Indigenous intellectual property. Whatever solution is reached, at present the copyright laws are colour-blind when presented with the complex and alien nature of Indigenous cultural practice. In the interests of reconciliation, natural justice and the integrity of Indigenous culture, reform cannot come too soon. NOTES 1. Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd, 1995; an Australian company copied and adapted various Indigenous works of art and had them woven into carpets in Vietnam, and imported into Australia. Permission to use the designs was never sought. An award of almost $200,000 was made to the 8 artists involved, and the offending carpets were withdrawn from sale. By 1996, Indofurn had been wound up and the director declared bankrupt: the artists have not received a cent. (Janke 1998b 9). 2. Fortunately for the Pitjantjatjara elders, the court held that Mountford's book did constitute a breach of confidence. 3. 'The Court held that the rights of Indigenous inhabitants of a colony are the same as the rights of a conquered nation: local law remains in place except to the extent that it may be in conflict with British law, and until it is over-ruled by the colonisers' (McDonald 26). 4. 'Native title is therefore the space between the two systems, where there is recognition. Native title is, for want of a better formulation the recognition space between the common law and the Aboriginal law which now afforded recognition in particular circumstances' (Pearson 154). 5. However, some cases subsequent to Mabo place limitations upon the recognition of Indigenous traditional law. Justice Mason in Coe v Commonwealth of Australia (1993, at 115) stated that 'Mabo … is at odds with the notion … that [Indigenous Australians] are entitled to any rights and interest other than those created or recognised by the law of the Commonwealth, the [relevant] State… and the common law' (McDonald 2627). References Coe v Commonwealth of Australia (1993) 68 ALJR 110 Ginsberg, J. (1992). Moral Rights in a Common Law System. Moral Rights in a Copyright System. P. Anderson and D. Saunders. Brisbane, Qld: Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University. Golvan, C. (1996). 'Aboriginal Art and Copyright.' Culture and Policy 7(3): 512. Gray, S. (1996). 'Black Enough? Urban and non-traditional Aboriginal art and proposed legislative protection for Aboriginal art.' Culture and Policy 7(3): 29-44 Heiss, A. (2001). Australian Copyright vs Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights, Australian Society of Authors. < http://www.asauthors.org/resources> Accessed 15.08.01. Janke, T. (1996). 'Protecting Australian indigenous arts and cultural expression.' Culture and Policy 7(3): 1327. Janke, T. (1998a). Editorial. Queensland Community Arts Network News 1: 45. Janke, T. (1998b). Federal Court awards record damages to Aboriginal artists. Queensland Community Arts Network News 1: 89. Janke, T., Frankel, M. & Company, Solicitors (1997). Proposals For The Recognition and Protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property, AIATSIS for the Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Project. <http://www.icip.lawnet.com.au/> Accessed 25.4.98. Johnson, V. (1996). Copyrites: Aboriginal art in the age of reproductive technologies. Sydney, NSW: NIAAA & Macquarie University. Mansell, M. (1997). Barricading our last frontier Aboriginal cultural and intellectual propery rights. Our land is Our Life: Land rights past, present and future. G. Yunupingu. St Lucia, Qld, UQP: 195209. Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd (1995) 30 IPR 209. Morris, C. (1998). The Responsibility of Maintaining the Oldest Continuous Culture in the World. Queensland Community Arts Network News 1: 67. Pearson, N. (1997). The Concept of Native Title at Common Law. Our Land is Our Life: Land rights past, present and future. G. Yunupingu. St Lucia, Qld, UQP: 150162. Saunders, D. (1992). Early Modern Law of Copyright in England: Statutes, courts and book cultures. Authorship and Copyright. D. Saunders. London, Routledge: 3574. Links http://www.icip.lawnet.com.au/ http://www.asauthors.org/resources Citation reference for this article MLA Style McDonnell, Margaret. "The Colour of Copyright" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.3 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/copyright.php>. Chicago Style McDonnell, Margaret, "The Colour of Copyright" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 3 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/copyright.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style McDonnell, Margaret. (2002) The Colour of Copyright. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(3). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/copyright.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionThe Internet (especially in the so-called Web 2.0 phase), digital media and file-sharing networks have thrust copyright law under public scrutiny, provoking discourses questioning what is fair in the digital age. Accessible hardware and software has led to prosumerism – creativity blending media consumption with media production to create new works that are freely disseminated online via popular video-sharing Web sites such as YouTube or genre specific music sites like GYBO (“Get Your Bootleg On”) amongst many others. The term “prosumer” is older than the Web, and the conceptual convergence of producer and consumer roles is certainly not new, for “at electric speeds the consumer becomes producer as the public becomes participant role player” (McLuhan 4). Similarly, Toffler’s “Third Wave” challenges “old power relationships” and promises to “heal the historic breach between producer and consumer, giving rise to the ‘prosumer’ economics” (27). Prosumption blurs the traditionally separate consumer and producer creating a new creative era of mass customisation of artefacts culled from the (copyrighted) media landscape (Tapscott 62-3). Simultaneously, corporate interests dependent upon the protections provided by copyright law lobby for augmented rights and actively defend their intellectual property through law suits, takedown notices and technological reinforcement. Despite a lack demonstrable economic harm in many cases, the propertarian approach is winning and frequently leading to absurd results (Collins).The balance between private and public interests in creative works is facilitated by the doctrine of fair use (as codified in the United States Copyright Act 1976, section 107). The majority of copyright laws contain “fair” exceptions to claims of infringement, but fair use is characterised by a flexible, open-ended approach that allows the law to flex with the times. Until recently the defence was unique to the U.S., but on 2 January Israel amended its copyright laws to include a fair use defence. (For an overview of the new Israeli fair use exception, see Efroni.) Despite its flexibility, fair use has been systematically eroded by ever encroaching copyrights. This paper argues that copyright enforcement has spun out of control and the raison d’être of the law has shifted from being “an engine of free expression” (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985)) towards a “legal regime for intellectual property that increasingly looks like the law of real property, or more properly an idealized construct of that law, one in which courts seeks out and punish virtually any use of an intellectual property right by another” (Lemley 1032). Although the copyright landscape appears bleak, two recent cases suggest that fair use has not fallen by the wayside and may well recover. This paper situates fair use as an essential legal and cultural mechanism for optimising creative expression.A Brief History of CopyrightThe law of copyright extends back to eighteenth century England when the Statute of Anne (1710) was enacted. Whilst the length of this paper precludes an in depth analysis of the law and its export to the U.S., it is important to stress the goals of copyright. “Copyright in the American tradition was not meant to be a “property right” as the public generally understands property. It was originally a narrow federal policy that granted a limited trade monopoly in exchange for universal use and access” (Vaidhyanathan 11). Copyright was designed as a right limited in scope and duration to ensure that culturally important creative works were not the victims of monopolies and were free (as later mandated in the U.S. Constitution) “to promote the progress.” During the 18th century English copyright discourse Lord Camden warned against propertarian approaches lest “all our learning will be locked up in the hands of the Tonsons and the Lintons of the age, who will set what price upon it their avarice chooses to demand, till the public become as much their slaves, as their own hackney compilers are” (Donaldson v. Becket 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 1000). Camden’s sentiments found favour in subsequent years with members of the North American judiciary reiterating that copyright was a limited right in the interests of society—the law’s primary beneficiary (see for example, Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]; Fox Film Corporation v. Doyal 286 US 123 [1932]; US v. Paramount Pictures 334 US 131 [1948]; Mazer v. Stein 347 US 201, 219 [1954]; Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aitken 422 U.S. 151 [1975]; Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co. 440 US 257 [1979]; Dowling v. United States 473 US 207 [1985]; Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 [1985]; Luther R. Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker, et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S 569 [1994]). Putting the “Fair” in Fair UseIn Folsom v. Marsh 9 F. Cas. 342 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841) (No. 4,901) Justice Storey formulated the modern shape of fair use from a wealth of case law extending back to 1740 and across the Atlantic. Over the course of one hundred years the English judiciary developed a relatively cohesive set of principles governing the use of a first author’s work by a subsequent author without consent. Storey’s synthesis of these principles proved so comprehensive that later English courts would look to his decision for guidance (Scott v. Stanford L.R. 3 Eq. 718, 722 (1867)). Patry explains fair use as integral to the social utility of copyright to “encourage. . . learned men to compose and write useful books” by allowing a second author to use, under certain circumstances, a portion of a prior author’s work, where the second author would himself produce a work promoting the goals of copyright (Patry 4-5).Fair use is a safety valve on copyright law to prevent oppressive monopolies, but some scholars suggest that fair use is less a defence and more a right that subordinates copyrights. Lange and Lange Anderson argue that the doctrine is not fundamentally about copyright or a system of property, but is rather concerned with the recognition of the public domain and its preservation from the ever encroaching advances of copyright (2001). Fair use should not be understood as subordinate to the exclusive rights of copyright owners. Rather, as Lange and Lange Anderson claim, the doctrine should stand in the superior position: the complete spectrum of ownership through copyright can only be determined pursuant to a consideration of what is required by fair use (Lange and Lange Anderson 19). The language of section 107 suggests that fair use is not subordinate to the bundle of rights enjoyed by copyright ownership: “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . is not an infringement of copyright” (Copyright Act 1976, s.107). Fair use is not merely about the marketplace for copyright works; it is concerned with what Weinreb refers to as “a community’s established practices and understandings” (1151-2). This argument boldly suggests that judicial application of fair use has consistently erred through subordinating the doctrine to copyright and considering simply the effect of the appropriation on the market place for the original work.The emphasis on economic factors has led courts to sympathise with copyright owners leading to a propertarian or Blackstonian approach to copyright (Collins; Travis) propagating the myth that any use of copyrighted materials must be licensed. Law and media reports alike are potted with examples. For example, in Bridgeport Music, Inc., et al v. Dimension Films et al 383 F. 3d 400 (6th Cir. 2004) a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the transformative use of a three-note guitar sample infringed copyrights and that musicians must obtain licence from copyright owners for every appropriated audio fragment regardless of duration or recognisability. Similarly, in 2006 Christopher Knight self-produced a one-minute television advertisement to support his campaign to be elected to the board of education for Rockingham County, North Carolina. As a fan of Star Wars, Knight used a makeshift Death Star and lightsaber in his clip, capitalising on the imagery of the Jedi Knight opposing the oppressive regime of the Empire to protect the people. According to an interview in The Register the advertisement was well received by local audiences prompting Knight to upload it to his YouTube channel. Several months later, Knight’s clip appeared on Web Junk 2.0, a cable show broadcast by VH1, a channel owned by media conglomerate Viacom. Although his permission was not sought, Knight was pleased with the exposure, after all “how often does a local school board ad wind up on VH1?” (Metz). Uploading the segment of Web Junk 2.0 featuring the advertisement to YouTube, however, led Viacom to quickly issue a take-down notice citing copyright infringement. Knight expressed his confusion at the apparent unfairness of the situation: “Viacom says that I can’t use my clip showing my commercial, claiming copy infringement? As we say in the South, that’s ass-backwards” (Metz).The current state of copyright law is, as Patry says, “depressing”:We are well past the healthy dose stage and into the serious illness stage ... things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together.The erosion of fair use by encroaching private interests represented by copyrights has led to strong critiques leveled at the judiciary and legislators by Lessig, McLeod and Vaidhyanathan. “Free culture” proponents warn that an overly strict copyright regime unbalanced by an equally prevalent fair use doctrine is dangerous to creativity, innovation, culture and democracy. After all, “few, if any, things ... are strictly original throughout. Every book in literature, science and art, borrows, and must necessarily borrow, and use much which was well known and used before. No man creates a new language for himself, at least if he be a wise man, in writing a book. He contents himself with the use of language already known and used and understood by others” (Emerson v. Davis, 8 F. Cas. 615, 619 (No. 4,436) (CCD Mass. 1845), qted in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, 62 U.S.L.W. at 4171 (1994)). The rise of the Web 2.0 phase with its emphasis on end-user created content has led to an unrelenting wave of creativity, and much of it incorporates or “mashes up” copyright material. As Negativland observes, free appropriation is “inevitable when a population bombarded with electronic media meets the hardware [and software] that encourages them to capture it” and creatively express themselves through appropriated media forms (251). The current state of copyright and fair use is bleak, but not beyond recovery. Two recent cases suggest a resurgence of the ideology underpinning the doctrine of fair use and the role played by copyright.Let’s Go CrazyIn “Let’s Go Crazy #1” on YouTube, Holden Lenz (then eighteen months old) is caught bopping to a barely recognizable recording of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” in his mother’s Pennsylvanian kitchen. The twenty-nine second long video was viewed a mere twenty-eight times by family and friends before Stephanie Lenz received an email from YouTube informing her of its compliance with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice issued by Universal, copyright owners of Prince’s recording (McDonald). Lenz has since filed a counterclaim against Universal and YouTube has reinstated the video. Ironically, the media exposure surrounding Lenz’s situation has led to the video being viewed 633,560 times at the time of writing. Comments associated with the video indicate a less than reverential opinion of Prince and Universal and support the fairness of using the song. On 8 Aug. 2008 a Californian District Court denied Universal’s motion to dismiss Lenz’s counterclaim. The question at the centre of the court judgment was whether copyright owners should consider “the fair use doctrine in formulating a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.” The court ultimately found in favour of Lenz and also reaffirmed the position of fair use in relation to copyright. Universal rested its argument on two key points. First, that copyright owners cannot be expected to consider fair use prior to issuing takedown notices because fair use is a defence, invoked after the act rather than a use authorized by the copyright owner or the law. Second, because the DMCA does not mention fair use, then there should be no requirement to consider it, or at the very least, it should not be considered until it is raised in legal defence.In rejecting both arguments the court accepted Lenz’s argument that fair use is an authorised use of copyrighted materials because the doctrine of fair use is embedded into the Copyright Act 1976. The court substantiated the point by emphasising the language of section 107. Although fair use is absent from the DMCA, the court reiterated that it is part of the Copyright Act and that “notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A” a fair use “is not an infringement of copyright” (s.107, Copyright Act 1976). Overzealous rights holders frequently abuse the DMCA as a means to quash all use of copyrighted materials without considering fair use. This decision reaffirms that fair use “should not be considered a bizarre, occasionally tolerated departure from the grand conception of the copyright design” but something that it is integral to the constitution of copyright law and essential in ensuring that copyright’s goals can be fulfilled (Leval 1100). Unlicensed musical sampling has never fared well in the courtroom. Three decades of rejection and admonishment by judges culminated in Bridgeport Music, Inc., et al v. Dimension Films et al 383 F. 3d 400 (6th Cir. 2004): “Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this stifling creativity in any significant way” was the ruling on an action brought against an unlicensed use of a three-note guitar sample under section 114, an audio piracy provision. The Bridgeport decision sounded a death knell for unlicensed sampling, ensuring that only artists with sufficient capital to pay the piper could legitimately be creative with the wealth of recorded music available. The cost of licensing samples can often outweigh the creative merit of the act itself as discussed by McLeod (86) and Beaujon (25). In August 2008 the Supreme Court of New York heard EMI v. Premise Media in which EMI sought an injunction against an unlicensed fifteen second excerpt of John Lennon’s “Imagine” featured in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a controversial documentary canvassing alleged chilling of intelligent design proponents in academic circles. (The family of John Lennon and EMI had previously failed to persuade a Manhattan federal court in a similar action.) The court upheld Premise Media’s arguments for fair use and rejected the Bridgeport approach on which EMI had rested its entire complaint. Justice Lowe criticised the Bridgeport court for its failure to examine the legislative intent of section 114 suggesting that courts should look to the black letter of the law rather than blindly accept propertarian arguments. This decision is of particular importance because it establishes that fair use applies to unlicensed use of sound recordings and re-establishes de minimis use.ConclusionThis paper was partly inspired by the final entry on eminent copyright scholar William Patry’s personal copyright law blog (1 Aug. 2008). A copyright lawyer for over 25 years, Patry articulated his belief that copyright law has swung too far away from its initial objectives and that balance could never be restored. The two cases presented in this paper demonstrate that fair use – and therefore balance – can be recovered in copyright. The federal Supreme Court and lower courts have stressed that copyright was intended to promote creativity and have upheld the fair doctrine, but in order for the balance to exist in copyright law, cases must come before the courts; copyright myth must be challenged. As McLeod states, “the real-world problems occur when institutions that actually have the resources to defend themselves against unwarranted or frivolous lawsuits choose to take the safe route, thus eroding fair use”(146-7). ReferencesBeaujon, Andrew. “It’s Not the Beat, It’s the Mocean.” CMJ New Music Monthly. April 1999.Collins, Steve. “Good Copy, Bad Copy: Covers, Sampling and Copyright.” M/C Journal 8.3 (2005). 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/02-collins.php›.———. “‘Property Talk’ and the Revival of Blackstonian Copyright.” M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/5-collins.php›.Donaldson v. Becket 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953.Efroni, Zohar. “Israel’s Fair Use.” The Center for Internet and Society (2008). 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5670›.Lange, David, and Jennifer Lange Anderson. “Copyright, Fair Use and Transformative Critical Appropriation.” Conference on the Public Domain, Duke Law School. 2001. 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers/langeand.pdf›.Lemley, Mark. “Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding.” Texas Law Review 83 (2005): 1031.Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas. New York: Random House, 2001.———. Free Culture. New York: Penguin, 2004.Leval, Pierre. “Toward a Fair Use Standard.” Harvard Law Review 103 (1990): 1105.McDonald, Heather. “Holden Lenz, 18 Months, versus Prince and Universal Music Group.” About.com: Music Careers 2007. 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://musicians.about.com/b/2007/10/27/holden-lenz-18-months-versus-prince-and-universal-music-group.htm›.McLeod, Kembrew. “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.” Stay Free 2002. 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html›.———. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday, 2005.McLuhan, Marshall, and Barrington Nevitt. Take Today: The Executive as Dropout. Ontario: Longman Canada, 1972.Metz, Cade. “Viacom Slaps YouTuber for Behaving like Viacom.” The Register 2007. 26 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/30/viacom_slaps_pol/›.Negativland, ed. Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. Concord: Seeland, 1995.Patry, William. The Fair Use Privilege in Copyright Law. Washington DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1985.———. “End of the Blog.” The Patry Copyright Blog. 1 Aug. 2008. 27 Aug. 2008 ‹http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of-blog.html›.Tapscott, Don. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence. New York: McGraw Hill, 1996.Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave. London, Glasgow, Sydney, Auckland. Toronto, Johannesburg: William Collins, 1980.Travis, Hannibal. “Pirates of the Information Infrastructure: Blackstonian Copyright and the First Amendment.” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 15 (2000), No. 777.Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York; London: New York UP, 2003.

Proponents of the free culture movement argue that contemporary, “over-zealous” copyright laws have an adverse affect on the freedoms of consumers and creators to make use of copyrighted materials. Lessig, McLeod, Vaidhyanathan, Demers, and Coombe, to name but a few, detail instances where creativity and consumer use have been hindered by copyright laws. The “intellectual land-grab” (Boyle, “Politics” 94), instigated by the increasing value of intangibles in the information age, has forced copyright owners to seek maximal protection for copyrighted materials. A propertarian approach seeks to imbue copyrighted materials with the same inalienable rights as real property, yet copyright is not a property right, because “the copyright owner … holds no ordinary chattel” (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 216 [1985]). A fundamental difference resides in the exclusivity of use: “If you eat my apple, then I cannot” but “if you “take” my idea, I still have it. If I tell you an idea, you have not deprived me of it. An unavoidable feature of intellectual property is that its consumption is non-rivalrous” (Lessig, Code 131). It is, as James Boyle notes, “different” to real property (Shamans 174). Vaidhyanathan observes, “copyright in the American tradition was not meant to be a “property right” as the public generally understands property. It was originally a narrow federal policy that granted a limited trade monopoly in exchange for universal use and access” (11). This paper explores the ways in which “property talk” has infiltrated copyright discourse and endangered the utility of the law in fostering free and diverse forms of creative expression. The possessiveness and exclusion that accompany “property talk” are difficult to reconcile with the utilitarian foundations of copyright. Transformative uses of copyrighted materials such as mashing, sampling and appropriative art are incompatible with a propertarian approach, subjecting freedom of creativity to arbitary licensing fees that often extend beyond the budget of creators (Collins). “Property talk” risks making transformative works an elitist form of creativity, available only to those with the financial resources necessary to meet the demands for licences. There is a wealth of decisions throughout American and English case law that sustain Vaidhyanathan’s argument (see for example, Donaldson v. Becket 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953; Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]; Fox Film Corporation v. Doyal 286 US 123 [1932]; US v. Paramount Pictures 334 US 131 [1948]; Mazer v. Stein 347 US 201, 219 [1954]; Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aitken 422 U.S. 151 [1975]; Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co. 440 US 257 [1979]; Dowling v. United States 473 US 207 [1985]; Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 [1985]; Luther R. Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker, et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S 569 [1994].). As Lemley states, however, “Congress, the courts and commentators increasingly treat intellectual property as simply a species of real property rather than as a unique form of legal protection designed to deal with public goods problems” (1-2). Although section 106 of the Copyright Act 1976 grants exclusive rights, sections 107 to 112 provide freedoms beyond the control of the copyright owner, undermining the exclusivity of s.106. Australian law similarly grants exceptions to the exclusive rights granted in section 31. Exclusivity was a principal objective of the eighteenth century Stationers’ argument for a literary property right. Sir William Blackstone, largely responsible for many Anglo-American concepts concerning the construction of property law, defined property in absolutist terms as “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the whole universe” (2). On the topic of reprints he staunchly argued an author “has clearly a right to dispose of that identical work as he pleases, and any attempt to take it from him, or vary the disposition he has made of it, is an invasion of his right of property” (405-6). Blackstonian copyright advanced an exclusive and perpetual property right. Blackstone’s interpretation of Lockean property theory argued for a copyright that extended beyond the author’s expression and encompassed the very “style” and “sentiments” held therein. (Tonson v. Collins [1760] 96 ER 189.) According to Locke, every Man has a Property in his own Person . . . The Labour of his Body and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. (287-8) Blackstone’s inventive interpretation of Locke “analogised ideas, thoughts, and opinions with tangible objects to which title may be taken by occupancy under English common law” (Travis 783). Locke’s labour theory, however, is not easily applied to intangibles because occupancy or use is non-rivalrous. The appropriate extent of an author’s proprietary right in a work led Locke himself to a philosophical impasse (Bowrey 324). Although Blackstonian copyright was suppressed by the House of Lords in the eighteenth century (Donaldson v. Becket [1774] 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953) and by the Supreme Court sixty years later (Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]), it has never wholly vacated copyright discourse. “Property talk” is undesirable in copyright discourse because it implicates totalitarian notions such as exclusion and inalienable private rights of ownership with no room for freedom of creativity or to use copyrighted materials for non-piracy related purposes. The notion that intellectual property is a species of property akin with real property is circulated by media companies seeking greater control over copyrighted materials, but the extent to which “property talk” has been adopted by the courts and scholars is troubling. Lemley (3-5) and Bell speculate whether the term “intellectual property” carries any responsibility for the propertisation of intangibles. A survey of federal court decisions between 1943 and 2003 reveals an exponential increase in the usage of the term. As noted by Samuelson (398) and Cohen (379), within the spheres of industry, culture, law, and politics the word “property” implies a broader scope of rights than those associated with a grant of limited monopoly. Music United claims “unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD”. James Brown argues sampling from his records is tantamount to theft: “Anything they take off my record is mine . . . Can I take a button off your shirt and put it on mine? Can I take a toenail off your foot – is that all right with you?” (Miller 1). Equating unauthorised copying with theft seeks to socially demonise activities occurring outside of the permission culture currently being fostered by inventive interpretations of the law. Increasing propagation of copyright as the personal property of the creator and/or copyright owner is instrumental in efforts to secure further legislative or judicial protection: Since 1909, courts and corporations have exploited public concern for rewarding established authors by steadily limiting the rights of readers, consumers, and emerging artists. All along, the author was deployed as a straw man in the debate. The unrewarded authorial genius was used as a rhetorical distraction that appealed to the American romantic individualism. (Vaidhyanathan 11) The “unrewarded authorial genius” was certainly tactically deployed in the eighteenth century in order to generate sympathy in pleas for further protection (Feather 71). Supporting the RIAA, artists including Britney Spears ask “Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It’s the same thing – people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music”. The presence of a notable celebrity claiming file-sharing is equivalent to stealing their personal property is a more publicly acceptable spin on the major labels’ attempts to maintain a monopoly over music distribution. In 1997, Congress enacted the No Electronic Theft Act which extended copyright protection into the digital realm and introduced stricter penalties for electronic reproduction. The use of “theft” in the title clearly aligns the statute with a propertarian portrayal of intangibles. Most movie fans will have witnessed anti-piracy propaganda in the cinema and on DVDs. Analogies between stealing a bag and downloading movies blur fundamental distinctions in the rivalrous/non-rivalrous nature of tangibles and intangibles (Lessig Code, 131). Of critical significance is the infiltration of “property talk” into the courtrooms. In 1990 Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote: Patents give a right to exclude, just as the law of trespass does with real property … Old rhetoric about intellectual property equating to monopoly seemed to have vanished, replaced by a recognition that a right to exclude in intellectual property is no different in principle from the right to exclude in physical property … Except in the rarest case, we should treat intellectual and physical property identically in the law – which is where the broader currents are taking us. (109, 112, 118) Although Easterbrook refers to patents, his endorsement of “property talk” is cause for concern given the similarity with which patents and copyrights have been historically treated (Ou 41). In Grand Upright v. Warner Bros. Judge Kevin Duffy commenced his judgment with the admonishment “Thou shalt not steal”. Similarly, in Jarvis v. A&M Records the court stated “there can be no more brazen stealing of music than digital sampling”. This move towards a propertarian approach is misguided. It runs contrary to the utilitarian principles underpinning copyright ideology and marginalises freedoms protected by the fair use doctrine, hence Justice Blackman’s warning that “interference with copyright does not easily equate with” interference with real property (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 216 [1985]). The framing of copyright in terms of real property privileges private monopoly over, and to the detriment of, the public interest in free and diverse creativity as well as freedoms of personal use. It is paramount that when dealing with copyright cases, the courts remain aware that their decisions involve not pure economic regulation, but regulation of expression, and what may count as rational where economic regulation is at issue is not necessarily rational where we focus on expression – in a Nation constitutionally dedicated to the free dissemination of speech, information, learning and culture. (Eldred v. Ashcroft 537 US 186 [2003] [J. Breyer dissenting]). Copyright is the prize in a contest of property vs. policy. As Justice Blackman observed, an infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over the copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use. While one may colloquially link infringement with some general notion of wrongful appropriation, infringement plainly implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud. (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 217-218 [1985]). Copyright policy places a great deal of control and cultural determinism in the hands of the creative industries. Without balance, oppressive monopolies form on the back of rights granted for the welfare of society in general. If a society wants to be independent and rich in diverse forms of cultural production and free expression, then the courts cannot continue to apply the law from within a propertarian paradigm. The question of whether culture should be determined by control or freedom in the interests of a free society is one that rapidly requires close attention – “it’s no longer a philosophical question but a practical one”. References Bayat, Asef. “Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the ‘Informal People.’” Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 53-72. Bell, T. W. “Author’s Welfare: Copyright as a Statutory Mechanism for Redistributing Rights.” Brooklyn Law Review 69 (2003): 229. Blackstone, W. Commentaries on the Laws of England: Volume II. New York: Garland Publishing, 1978. (Reprint of 1783 edition.) Boyle, J. Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Boyle, J. “A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?” Duke Law Journal 47 (1997): 87. Bowrey, K. “Who’s Writing Copyright’s History?” European Intellectual Property Review 18.6 (1996): 322. Cohen, J. “Overcoming Property: Does Copyright Trump Privacy?” University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 375 (2002). Collins, S. “Good Copy, Bad Copy.” (2005) M/C Journal 8.3 (2006). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/02-collins.php>. Coombe, R. The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Demers, J. Steal This Music. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 2006. Easterbrook, F. H. “Intellectual Property Is Still Property.” (1990) Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 13 (1990): 108. Feather, J. Publishing, Piracy and Politics: An Historical Study of Copyright in Britain. London: Mansell, 1994. Lemley, M. “Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding.” Texas Law Review 83 (2005): 1031. Lessig, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Lessing, L. The Future of Ideas. New York: Random House, 2001. Lessig, L. Free Culture. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1988. McLeod, K. “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An Interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.” Stay Free (2002). 14 June 2006 http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html>. McLeod, K. “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist-Academic.” Popular Music & Society 28 (2005): 79. McLeod, K. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday Books, 2005. Miller, M.W. “Creativity Furor: High-Tech Alteration of Sights and Sounds Divides the Art World.” Wall Street Journal (1987): 1. Ou, T. “From Wheaton v. Peters to Eldred v. Reno: An Originalist Interpretation of the Copyright Clause.” Berkman Center for Internet & Society (2000). 14 June 2006 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/cyber/OuEldred.pdf>. Samuelson, P. “Information as Property: Do Ruckelshaus and Carpenter Signal a Changing Direction in Intellectual Property Law?” Catholic University Law Review 38 (1989): 365. Travis, H. “Pirates of the Information Infrastructure: Blackstonian Copyright and the First Amendment.” Berkeley Technology Law Journal 15 (2000): 777. Vaidhyanathan, S. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York: New York UP, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Collins, Steve. "‘Property Talk’ and the Revival of Blackstonian Copyright." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/5-collins.php>. APA Style Collins, S. (Sep. 2006) "‘Property Talk’ and the Revival of Blackstonian Copyright," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/5-collins.php>.

Background. Intellectual property rights are present in our everyday lives to a huge extent. Law of intellectual property is generally governed by national law, with general principles set out in international treaties. Copyrights strictly protect only the expression of ideas, not the underlying ideas, procedures, methods of operation, or mathematical concepts themselves. Berne Convention was first signed in 1886 and to this day is one of the most important international treaties concerning copyrights and moral rights.Objective. This paper aims to shortly explain the basic rights and privileges provided to the authors by the Berne Convention in its present version, i.e. Paris Act of July 24, 1971, amended on September 28, 1979.Results. Berne Convention provides a „conventional minimum”, meaning that all members must provide at least the rights granted by the Berne Convention to the authors. However, each member can grant more rights to the authors. In article 7 Berne Convention regulates the term of protection of copyrights, which is the life of the author and fifty years after her death. Moral rights, provided in Article 6bis, were added in 1928 and grant the author a right to claim authorship of the work and the right of respect. Article 10 of the Berne Convention provides “certain free uses of works”.Conclusions. The freedoms granted include possibilities of making quotations and of using the work of someone else to illustrate for teaching purposes. However, in both cases, an indication of the source of the work is required.

In Lithuania, the history of copyright started with the abolishment of the Third Lithuanian Statute in 1840 and the establishment of Russia’s legal system. Introduced in 1828 as the rules on literary property, Russian copyright regulations were extended to cover music and visual art in 1845 and 1846, with further revisions following in 1857. The concept of fine art established in the copyright statute of 1857 was based on the image of an artwork as a unique manual product that was different from a mechanical reproduction devoid of any traces of authorship. The development of the art market and the progress of the image-making technologies, however, forced Russian legislators to adjust their legal criteria. The role played by photography was central in the process. The new visual medium overturned old assessments that were grounded in traditional opposition between unique and mass production. Thus, the copyright statute of 1911 was much more focused on artworks as intellectual values rather than tangible things. The Russian copyright rules entrenched the supremacy of inventive personal creativity over the copying and multiplication of art objects. However, in Lithuania, the law for protecting the rights of artists remained unenforced. The principal causes of the law’s ineffectiveness were rooted in the archaic forms of local art market and the conservative features of regional culture. This is why during the nineteenth century the idea of individual rights and the call for personal artistic freedom was manifested only on a theoretical level, while in practice the commitment to the common interests and retrospective ideals prevailed, encouraging Lithuanian painters and sculptors to replicate canonical works. The only known case of protecting personal intellectual property was related not to traditional fine art but to photography. In 1874, a Vilnius-based photographer Józef Czechowicz applied to the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and received an official confirmation of authorship for twenty-five of his photographic prints. It was an extraordinary event not only in Lithuanian provinces but also throughout the Russian Empire. Not coincidentally, the first attempt to appeal to the copyright law was made by an artist representing new visual media and working in the field closely connected to the sphere of technical reproduction and commerce. The copyright statute of 1911 was a relatively progressive legal act. After 1918, it was translated into Lithuanian and remained in effect until 1940, i.e. during the entire existence of the Republic of Lithuania. The fact that the government of a young independent state didn’t try to draft its own original copyright rules testifies not only to the progressiveness of the imperial document but also to the insignificance of the questions concerning authorship, intellectual property and artistic rights in the interwar period.

Nine Inch Nails have just released a new single; In addition to the usual formats, “The Hand That Feeds” was available for free download in Garageband format. Trent Reznor explained, “For quite some time I’ve been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks – to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what’s there” (MacMinute 15 April 2005). Reznor invites creativity facilitated by copying and transformation. “Copy” carries connotations of unsavoury notions such as piracy, stealing, fake, and plagiarism. Conversely, in some circumstances copying is acceptable, some situations demand copying. This article examines the treatment of “copy” at the intersection of musical creativity and copyright law with regard to cover versions and sampling. Waldron reminds us that copyright was devised first and foremost with a public benefit in mind (851). This fundamental has been persistently reiterated (H. R Rep. (1909); Sen. Rep. (1909); H. R. Rep. (1988); Patterson & Lindberg 70). The law grants creators a bundle of rights in copyrighted works. Two rights implicated in recorded music are located in the composition and the recording. Many potential uses of copyrighted songs require a license. The Copyright Act 1976, s. 115 provides a compulsory licence for cover versions. In other words, any song can be covered for a statutory royalty fee. The law curtails the extent of the copyright monopoly. Compulsory licensing serves both creative and business sides of the recording industry. First, it ensures creative diversity. Musicians are free to reinterpret cultural soundtracks. Second, it safeguards the composer’s right to generate an income from his work by securing royalties for subsequent usage. Although s. 115 permits a certain degree of artistic licence, it requires “the arrangement shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work”. Notwithstanding this proviso, songs can still be transformed and their meaning reshaped. Johnny Cash was able to provide an insight into the mind of a dying man through covering such songs as Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and Parker & Charles’ “We’ll Meet Again”. Compulsory licensing was introduced in response to a Supreme Court decision that deprived composers of royalties. Congress recognised: The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give to the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition, and it has been a serious and difficult task to combine the protection of the composer with the protection of the public, and to so frame an act that it would accomplish the double purpose of securing to the composer and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies, which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests (H. R. Rep. (1909)). Composers exercise rights over the initial exploitation of a song. Once a recording is released, the right is curtailed to serve the public dimension of copyright. A sampler is a device that allows recorded (sampled) sounds to be triggered from a MIDI keyboard or sequencer. Samplers provide potent tools for transforming sounds – filters, pitch-shifting, time-stretching and effects can warp samples beyond recognition. Sampling is a practice that formed the backbone of rap and hip-hop, features heavily in many forms of electronic music, and has proved invaluable in many studio productions (Rose 73-80; Prendergast 383-84, 415-16, 433-34). Samples implicate both of the musical copyrights mentioned earlier. To legally use a sample, the rights in the recording and the underlying composition must be licensed. Ostensibly, acquiring permission to use the composition poses few obstacles due to the compulsory licence. The sound recording, however, is a different matter entirely. There is no compulsory licence for sound recordings. Copyright owners (usually record labels) are free to demand whatever fees they see fit. For example, SST charged Fatboy Slim $1000 for sampling a Negativland record (Negativland). (Ironically, the sample was itself an unlicensed sample appropriated from a 1966 religious recording.) The price paid by The Verve for sampling an obscure orchestral version of a Rolling Stones song was more substantial. Allan Klein owns the copyright in “The Last Time” released by The Andrew Oldham Orchestra in 1965 (American Hit Network, undated). Licence negotiations for the sample left Klein with 100% of the royalties from the song and The Verve with a bitter taste. To add insult to injury, “Bittersweet Symphony” was attributed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards when the song was nominated for a Grammy (Superswell, undated). License fees can prove prohibitive to many musicians and may outweigh the artistic merit in using the sample: “Sony wanted five thousand dollars for the Clash sample, which … is one thousand dollars a word. In retrospect, this was a bargain, given the skyrocketing costs of sampling throughout the 1990s” (McLeod 86). Adam Dorn, alias Mocean Worker, tried for nine months to licence a sample of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Eventually his persistent requests were met with a demand for $10,000 in advance with royalties of six cents per record. Dorn was working with an album budget of a mere $40 and was expecting to sell 2500 copies (Beaujon 25). Unregulated licensing fees stifle creativity and create a de facto monopoly over recorded music. Although copyright was designed to be an engine of free expression1 it still carries characteristics of its monopolistic, totalitarian heritage. The decision in Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films supported this monopoly. Judge Guy ruled, “Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this stifling creativity in any significant way” (397). The lack of compulsory licensing and the Bridgeport decision creates an untenable situation for sampling musicians and adversely impacts upon the public benefit derived from creative diversity and transformative works (Netanel 288, 331). The sobering potential for lawsuits, ruinous legal costs, injunctions, damages (to copyright owners as well as master recordings), suppresses the creativity of musicians unwilling or unable to pay licence fees (Negativland 251.). I’m a big fan of David Bowie. If I wanted to release a cover version of “Survive”, Bowie and Gabrels (composers) and BMI (publishers) could not prevent it. According the Harry Fox Agency’s online licensing system, it would cost $222.50 (US) for a licence to produce 2500 copies. The compulsory licence demands fidelity to the character of the original. Although my own individual style would be embedded in the cover version, the potential for transformation is limited. Whilst trawling through results from a search for “acapella” on the Soulseek network I found an MP3 of the vocal acapella for “Survive”. Thirty minutes later Bowie was loaded into Sonar 4 and accompanied by a drum loop and bass line whilst I jammed along on guitar and tinkered with synths. Free access to music encourages creative diversity and active cultural participation. Licensing fees, however, may prohibit such creative explorations. Sampling technology offers some truly innovative possibilities for transforming recorded sound. The Roland VariOS can pitch-eliminate; a vocal sample can be reproduced to a melody played by the sampling musician. Although the original singer’s voice is preserved the melody and characteristic nuances can be significantly altered: V-Producer’s Phrase Scope [a system software component] separates the melody from the rest of the phrase, allowing users to re-construct a new melody or add harmonies graphically, or by playing in notes from a MIDI keyboard. Using Phrase Scope, you can take an existing vocal phrase or melodic instrument phrase and change the actual notes, phrasing and vocal gender without unwanted artefacts. Bowie’s original vocal could be aligned with an original melody and set to an original composition. The original would be completely transformed into a new creative work. Unfortunately, EMI is the parent company for Virgin Records, the copyright owner of “Survive”. It is doubtful licence fees could be accommodated by many inspired bedroom producers. EMI’s reaction to DJ Dangermouse’s “Grey Album“ suggests that it would not look upon unlicensed sampling with any favour. Threatening letters from lawyers representing one of the “Big Four” are enough to subjugate most small time producers. Fair use? If a musician is unable to afford a licence, it is unlikely he can afford a fair use defence. Musicians planning only a limited run, underground release may be forgiven for assuming that the “Big Four” have better things to do than trawl through bins of White Labels for unlicensed samples. Professional bootlegger Richard X found otherwise when his history of unlicensed sampling caught up to him: “A certain major label won’t let me use any samples I ask them to. We just got a report back from them saying, ‘Due to Richard’s earlier work of which we are well aware, we will not be assisting him with any future projects’” (Petridis). For record labels “copy” equals “money”. Allan Klein did very well out of licensing his newly acquired “Bittersweet Symphony” to Nike (Superswell). Inability to afford either licences or legal costs means that some innovative and novel creations will never leave the bedroom. Sampling masterpieces such as “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” are no longer cost effective (McLeod). The absence of a compulsory licence for sampling permits a de facto monopoly over recorded music. Tricia Rose notes the recording industry knows the value of “copy” (90). “Copy” is permissible as long as musicians pay for the privilege – if the resultant market for the sampling song is not highly profitable labels may decline to negotiate a licence. Some parties have recognised the value of the desire to creatively engage with music. UK (dis)band(ed) Curve posted component samples of their song “Unreadable Communication” on their website and invited fans to create their own versions of the song. All submissions were listed on the website. Although the band reserved copyright, they permitted me to upload my version to my online distribution website for free download. It has been downloaded 113 times and streamed a further 112 times over the last couple of months. The remix project has a reciprocal dimension: Creative engagement strengthens the fan base. Guitarist/programmer, Dean Garcia, states “the main reason for posting the samples is for others to experiment with something they love . . . an opportunity as you say to mess around with something you otherwise would never have access to2”. Umixit is testing the market for remixable songs. Although the company has only five bands on its roster (the most notable being Aerosmith), it will be interesting to observe the development of a market for “neutered sampling” and how long it will be before the majors claim a stake. The would-be descendants of Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambaataa may find themselves bound by end-user licences and contracts. The notion of “copy” at the nexus of creativity and copyright law is simultaneously a vehicle for free expression and a vulgar infringement on a valuable economic interest. The compulsory licence for cover versions encourages musicians to rework existing music, uncover hidden meaning, challenge the boundaries of genre, and actively participate in culture creation. Lack of affirmative congressional or judicial interference in the current sampling regime places the beneficial aspects of “copy” under an oppressive monopoly founded on copyright, an engine of free expression. References American Hit Network. “Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve.” Undated. 17 April 2005 http://www.americanhitnetwork.com/1990/fsongs.cfm?id=8&view=detail&rank=1>. Beaujon, A. “It’s Not The Beat, It’s the Mocean.’ CMJ New Music Monthly, April 1999. EMI. “EMI and Orange Announce New Music Deal.” Immediate Future: PR & Communications, 6 January 2005. 17 April 2005 http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/359>. H. R. Rep. No. 2222. 60th Cong., 2nd Sess. 7. 1909. H. R. Rep. No. 609. 100th Cong., 2nd Sess. 23. 1988. MacMinute. “NIN Offers New Single in GarageBand Format.” 15 April 2005. 16 April 2005 http://www.macminute.com/2005/04/15/nin/>. McLeod, K. “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An Interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee.” Stay Free 2002, 23 June 2004 http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html>. McLeod, K. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday Books, 2005. Negativland. “Discography.” Undated. 18 April 2005 http://www.negativland.com/negdisco.html>. Negativland (ed.). Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. Concord: Seeland, 2005. Netanel, N. W. “Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society.” 106 Yale L. J. 283. 1996. Patterson, L.R., and S. Lindberg. The Nature of Copyright: A Law of Users’ Rights. Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1991. Petridis, A. “Pop Will Eat Itself.” The Guardian (UK) 2003. 22 June 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,922797,00.html>. Prendergast, M. The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby – The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Rose, T. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2004. Sen. Rep. No. 1108, 60th Cong., 2nd Sess. 7. 1909. Superswell. “Horror Stories.” 17 April 2005 http://www.superswell.com/samplelaw/horror.html>. Waldron, J. “From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property.” 68 Chicago-Kent Law Review 842, 1998. Endnotes 1 Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985). 2 From personal correspondence with Curve dated 16 September 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Collins, Steve. "Good Copy, Bad Copy: Covers, Sampling and Copyright." M/C Journal 8.3 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/02-collins.php>. APA Style Collins, S. (Jul. 2005) "Good Copy, Bad Copy: Covers, Sampling and Copyright," M/C Journal, 8(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/02-collins.php>.

“...children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents...” — Stephen Kline, The Making of Children’s Culture We live in a world saturated by design and through design artefacts, one can glean unique insights into a culture's values and norms. In fact, some academics, such as British media and film theorist Ben Highmore, see the two areas so inextricably intertwined as to suggest a wholesale “re-branding of the cultural sciences as design studies” (14). Too often, however, everyday objects are marginalised or overlooked as objects of scholarly attention. The field of material culture studies seeks to change that by focussing on the quotidian object and its ability to reveal much about the time, place, and culture in which it was designed and used. This article takes on one such object, a mid-century children's toy tea set, whose humble journey from 1968 Sears catalogue to 2014 thrift shop—and subsequently this author’s basement—reveals complex rhetorical messages communicated both visually and verbally. As material culture studies theorist Jules Prown notes, the field’s foundation is laid upon the understanding “that objects made ... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (1-2). In this case, the objects’ material and aesthetic characteristics can be shown to reflect some of the pervasive stereotypes and gender roles of the mid-century and trace some of the prevailing tastes of the American middle class of that era, or perhaps more accurately the type of design that came to represent good taste and a modern aesthetic for that audience. A wealth of research exists on the function of toys and play in learning about the world and even the role of toy selection in early sex-typing, socialisation, and personal identity of children (Teglasi). This particular research area isn’t the focus of this article; however, one aspect that is directly relevant and will be addressed is the notion of adult role-playing among children and the role of toys in communicating certain adult practices or values to the child—what sociologist David Oswell calls “the dedifferentiation of childhood and adulthood” (200). Neither is the focus of this article the practice nor indeed the ethicality of marketing to children. Relevant to this particular example I suggest, is as a product utilising messaging aimed not at children but at adults, appealing to certain parents’ interest in nurturing within their child a perceived era and class-appropriate sense of taste. This was fuelled in large part by the curatorial pursuits of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coupled with an interest and investment in raising their children in a design-forward household and a desire for toys that reflected that priority; in essence, parents wishing to raise modern children. Following Prown’s model of material culture analysis, the tea set is examined in three stages, through description, deduction and speculation with each stage building on the previous one. Figure 1: Porcelain Toy Tea Set. Description The tea set consists of twenty-six pieces that allows service for six. Six cups, saucers, and plates; a tall carafe with spout, handle and lid; a smaller vessel with a spout and handle; a small round bowl with a lid; a larger oval bowl with a lid, and a coordinated oval platter. The cups are just under two inches tall and two inches in diameter. The largest piece, the platter is roughly six inches by four inches. The pieces are made of a ceramic material white in colour and glossy in texture and are very lightweight. The rim or edge of each piece is decorated with a motif of three straight lines in two different shades of blue and in different thicknesses, interspersed with a set of three black wiggly lines. Figure 2: Porcelain Toy Tea Set Box. The set is packaged for retail purposes and the original box appears to be fully intact. The packaging of an object carries artefactual evidence just as important as what it contains that falls into the category of a “‘para-artefact’ … paraphernalia that accompanies the product (labels, packaging, instructions etc.), all of which contribute to a product’s discourse” (Folkmann and Jensen 83). The graphics on the box are colourful, featuring similar shades of teal blue as found on the objects, with the addition of orange and a silver sticker featuring the logo of the American retailer Sears. The cover features an illustration of the objects on an orange tabletop. The most prominent text that confirms that the toy is a “Porcelain Toy Tea Set” is in an organic, almost psychedelic style that mimics both popular graphics of this era—especially album art and concert posters—as well as the organic curves of steam that emanate from the illustrated teapot’s spout. Additional messages appear on the box, in particular “Contemporary DESIGN” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. Along the edges of the box lid, a detail of the decorative motif is reproduced somewhat abstracted from what actually appears on the ceramic objects. Figure 3: Sears’s Christmas Wishbook Catalogue, page 574 (1968). Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) is well-known for its over one-hundred-year history of producing printed merchandise catalogues. The catalogue is another important para-artefact to consider in analysing the objects. The tea set first appeared in the 1968 Sears Christmas Wishbook. There is no date or copyright on the box, so only its inclusion in the catalogue allows the set to be accurately dated. It also allows us to understand how the set was originally marketed. Deduction In the deduction phase, we focus on the sensory aesthetic and functional interactive qualities of the various components of the set. In terms of its function, it is critical that we situate the objects in their original use context, play. The light weight of the objects and thinness of the ceramic material lends the objects a delicate, if not fragile, feeling which indicates that this set is not for rough use. Toy historian Lorraine May Punchard differentiates between toy tea sets “meant to be used by little girls, having parties for their friends and practising the social graces of the times” and smaller sets or doll dishes “made for little girls to have parties with their dolls, or for their dolls to have parties among themselves” (7). Similar sets sold by Sears feature images of girls using the sets with both human playmates and dolls. The quantity allowing service for six invites multiple users to join the party. The packaging makes clear that these toy tea sets were intended for imaginary play only, rendering them non-functional through an all-capitals caution declaiming “IMPORTANT: Do not use near heat”. The walls and handles of the cups are so thin one can imagine that they would quickly become dangerous if filled with a hot liquid. Nevertheless, the lid of the oval bowl has a tan stain or watermark which suggests actual use. The box is broken up by pink cardboard partitions dividing it into segments sized for each item in the set. Interestingly even the small squares of unfinished corrugated cardboard used as cushioning between each stacked plate have survived. The evidence of careful re-packing indicates that great care was taken in keeping the objects safe. It may suggest that even though the set was used, the children or perhaps the parents, considered the set as something to care for and conserve for the future. Flaws in the glaze and applique of the design motif can be found on several pieces in the set and offer some insight as to the technique used in producing these items. Errors such as the design being perfectly evenly spaced but crooked in its alignment to the rim, or pieces of the design becoming detached or accidentally folded over and overlapping itself could only be the result of a print transfer technique popularised with decorative china of the Victorian era, a technique which lends itself to mass production and lower cost when compared to hand decoration. Speculation In the speculation stage, we can consider the external evidence and begin a more rigorous investigation of the messaging, iconography, and possible meanings of the material artefact. Aspects of the set allow a number of useful observations about the role of such an object in its own time and context. Sociologists observe the role of toys as embodiments of particular types of parental messages and values (Cross 292) and note how particularly in the twentieth century “children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents” (Kline 96). Throughout history children’s toys often reflected a miniaturised version of the adult world allowing children to role-play as imagined adult-selves. Kristina Ranalli explored parallels between the practice of drinking tea and the play-acting of the child’s tea party, particularly in the nineteenth century, as a gendered ritual of gentility; a method of socialisation and education, and an opportunity for exploratory and even transgressive play by “spontaneously creating mini-societies with rules of their own” (20). Such toys and objects were available through the Sears mail-order catalogue from the very beginning at the end of the nineteenth century (McGuire). Propelled by the post-war boom of suburban development and homeownership—that generation’s manifestation of the American Dream—concern with home décor and design was elevated among the American mainstream to a degree never before seen. There was a hunger for new, streamlined, efficient, modernist living. In his essay titled “Domesticating Modernity”, historian Jeffrey L. Meikle notes that many early modernist designers found that perhaps the most potent way to “‘domesticate’ modernism and make it more familiar was to miniaturise it; for example, to shrink the skyscraper and put it into the home as furniture or tableware” (143). Dr Timothy Blade, curator of the 1985 exhibition of girls’ toys at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Gallery—now the Goldstein Museum of Design—described in his introduction “a miniaturised world with little props which duplicate, however rudely, the larger world of adults” (5). Noting the power of such toys to reflect adult values of their time, Blade continues: “the microcosm of the child’s world, remarkably furnished by the miniaturised props of their parents’ world, holds many direct and implied messages about the society which brought it into being” (9). In large part, the mid-century Sears catalogues capture the spirit of an era when, as collector Thomas Holland observes, “little girls were still primarily being offered only the options of glamour, beauty and parenthood as the stuff of their fantasies” (175). Holland notes that “the Wishbooks of the fifties [and, I would add, the sixties] assumed most girls would follow in their mother’s footsteps to become full-time housewives and mommies” (1). Blade grouped toys into three categories: cooking, cleaning, and sewing. A tea set could arguably be considered part of the cooking category, but closer examination of the language used in marketing this object—“little hostesses”, et cetera—suggests an emphasis not on cooking but on serving or entertaining. This particular category was not prevalent in the era examined by Blade, but the cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century, particularly the rapid popularisation of a suburban lifestyle, may have led to the use of entertaining as an additional distinct category of role play in the process of learning to become a “proper” homemaker. Sears and other retailers offered a wide variety of styles of toy tea sets during this era. Blade and numerous other sources observe that children’s toy furniture and appliances tended to reflect the style and aesthetic qualities of their contemporary parallels in the adult world, the better to associate the child’s objects to its adult equivalent. The toy tea set’s packaging trumpets messages intended to appeal to modernist values and identity including “Contemporary Design” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. The use of this coded marketing language, aimed particularly at parents, can be traced back several decades. In 1928 a group of American industrial and textile designers established the American Designers' Gallery in New York, in part to encourage American designers to innovate and adopt new styles such as those seen in the L’ Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, the exposition that sparked international interest in the Art Deco or Art Moderne aesthetic. One of the gallery founders, Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-American industrial and textile designer who had studied in Austria and was influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, publicised her new style of nursery furnishings as “designed for the very modern American child” (Brown 80). Sears itself was no stranger to the appeal of such language. The term “contemporary design” was ubiquitous in catalogue copy of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, used to describe everything from draperies (1959) and bedspreads (1961) to spice racks (1964) and the Lady Kenmore portable dishwasher (1961). An emphasis on the role of design in one’s life and surroundings can be traced back to efforts by MoMA. The museum’s interest in modern design hearkens back almost to the institution’s inception, particularly in relation to industrial design and the aestheticisation of everyday objects (Marshall). Through exhibitions and in partnership with mass-market magazines, department stores and manufacturer showrooms, MoMA curators evangelised the importance of “good design” a term that can be found in use as early as 1942. What Is Good Design? followed the pattern of prior exhibitions such as What Is Modern Painting? and situated modern design at the centre of exhibitions that toured the United States in the first half of the nineteen-fifties. To MoMA and its partners, “good design” signified the narrow identification of proper taste in furniture, home decor and accessories; effectively, the establishment of a design canon. The viewpoints enshrined in these exhibitions and partnerships were highly influential on the nation’s perception of taste for decades to come, as the trickle-down effect reached a much broader segment of consumers than those that directly experienced the museum or its exhibitions (Lawrence.) This was evident not only at high-end shops such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Even mass-market retailers sought out well-known figures of modernist design to contribute to their offerings. Sears, for example, commissioned noted modernist designer and ceramicist Russel Wright to produce a variety of serving ware and decor items exclusively for the company. Notably for this study, he was also commissioned to create a toy tea set for children. The 1957 Wishbook touts the set as “especially created to delight modern little misses”. Within its Good Design series, MoMA exhibitions celebrated numerous prominent Nordic designers who were exploring simplified forms and new material technologies. In the 1968 Wishbook, the retailer describes the Porcelain Toy Tea Set as “Danish-inspired china for young moderns”. The reference to Danish design is certainly compatible with the modernist appeal; after the explosion in popularity of Danish furniture design, the term “Danish Modern” was commonly used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties as shorthand for pan-Scandinavian or Nordic design, or more broadly for any modern furniture design regardless of origin that exhibited similar characteristics. In subsequent decades the notion of a monolithic Scandinavian-Nordic design aesthetic or movement has been debunked as primarily an economically motivated marketing ploy (Olivarez et al.; Fallan). In the United States, the term “Danish Modern” became so commonly misused that the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts called upon the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to legally restrict the use of the labels “Danish” and “Danish Modern” to companies genuinely originating in Denmark. Coincidentally the FTC ruled on this in 1968, noting “that ‘Danish Modern’ carries certain meanings, and... that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a foreign culture” (Hansen 451). In the case of the Porcelain Toy Tea Set examined here, Sears was not claiming that the design was “Danish” but rather “Danish-inspired”. One must wonder, was this another coded marketing ploy to communicate a sense of “Good Design” to potential customers? An examination of the formal qualities of the set’s components, particularly the simplified geometric forms and the handle style of the cups, confirms that it is unlike a traditional—say, Victorian-style—tea set. Punchard observes that during this era some American tea sets were actually being modelled on coffee services rather than traditional tea services (148). A visual comparison of other sets sold by Sears in the same year reveals a variety of cup and pot shapes—with some similar to the set in question—while others exhibit more traditional teapot and cup shapes. Coffee culture was historically prominent in Nordic cultures so there is at least a passing reference to that aspect of Nordic—if not specifically Danish—influence in the design. But what of the decorative motif? Simple curved lines were certainly prominent in Danish furniture and architecture of this era, and occasionally found in combination with straight lines, but no connection back to any specific Danish motif could be found even after consultation with experts in the field from the Museum of Danish America and the Vesterheim National Norwegian-American Museum (personal correspondence). However, knowing that the average American consumer of this era—even the design-savvy among them—consumed Scandinavian design without distinguishing between the various nations, a possible explanation could be contained in the promotion of Finnish textiles at the time. In the decade prior to the manufacture of the tea set a major design tendency began to emerge in the United States, triggered by the geometric design motifs of the Finnish textile and apparel company Marimekko. Marimekko products were introduced to the American market in 1959 via the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based retailer Design Research (DR) and quickly exploded in popularity particularly after would-be First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in national media wearing Marimekko dresses during the 1960 presidential campaign and on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. (Thompson and Lange). The company’s styling soon came to epitomise a new youth aesthetic of the early nineteen sixties in the United States, a softer and more casual predecessor to the London “mod” influence. During this time multiple patterns were released that brought a sense of whimsy and a more human touch to classic mechanical patterns and stripes. The patterns Piccolo (1953), Helmipitsi (1959), and Varvunraita (1959), all designed by Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi offered varying motifs of parallel straight lines. Maija Isola's Silkkikuikka (1961) pattern—said to be inspired by the plumage of the Great Crested Grebe—combined parallel serpentine lines with straight and angled lines, available in a variety of colours. These and other geometrically inspired patterns quickly inundated apparel and decor markets. DR built a vastly expanded Cambridge flagship store and opened new locations in New York in 1961 and 1964, and in San Francisco in 1965 fuelled in no small part by the fact that they remained the exclusive outlet for Marimekko in the United States. It is clear that Marimekko’s approach to pattern influenced designers and manufacturers across industries. Design historian Lesley Jackson demonstrates that Marimekko designs influenced or were emulated by numerous other companies across Scandinavia and beyond (72-78). The company’s influence grew to such an extent that some described it as a “conquest of the international market” (Hedqvist and Tarschys 150). Subsequent design-forward retailers such as IKEA and Crate and Barrel continue to look to Marimekko even today for modern design inspiration. In 2016 the mass-market retailer Target formed a design partnership with Marimekko to offer an expansive limited-edition line in their stores, numbering over two hundred items. So, despite the “Danish” misnomer, it is quite conceivable that designers working for or commissioned by Sears in 1968 may have taken their aesthetic cues from Marimekko’s booming work, demonstrating a clear understanding of the contemporary high design aesthetic of the time and coding the marketing rhetoric accordingly even if incorrectly. Conclusion The Sears catalogue plays a unique role in capturing cross-sections of American culture not only as a sales tool but also in Holland’s words as “a beautifully illustrated diary of America, it’s [sic] people and the way we thought about things” (1). Applying a rhetorical and material culture analysis to the catalogue and the objects within it provides a unique glimpse into the roles these objects played in mediating relationships, transmitting values and embodying social practices, tastes and beliefs of mid-century American consumers. Adult consumers familiar with the characteristics of the culture of “Good Design” potentially could have made a connection between the simplified geometric forms of the components of the toy tea set and say the work of modernist tableware designers such as Kaj Franck, or between the set’s graphic pattern and the modernist motifs of Marimekko and its imitators. But for a much broader segment of the population with a less direct understanding of modernist aesthetics, those connections may not have been immediately apparent. The rhetorical messaging behind the objects’ packaging and marketing used class and taste signifiers such as modern, contemporary and “Danish” to reinforce this connection to effect an emotional and aspirational appeal. These messages were coded to position the set as an effective transmitter of modernist values and to target parents with the ambition to create “appropriately modern” environments for their children. References Ancestry.com. “Historic Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1896–1993.” <http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1670>. Baker Furniture Inc. “Design Legacy: Our Story.” n.d. <http://www.bakerfurniture.com/design-story/ legacy-of-quality/design-legacy/>. Blade, Timothy Trent. “Introduction.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances: June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Brown, Ashley. “Ilonka Karasz: Rediscovering a Modernist Pioneer.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 8.1 (2000-1): 69–91. Cross, Gary. “Gendered Futures/Gendered Fantasies: Toys as Representatives of Changing Childhood.” American Journal of Semiotics 12.1 (1995): 289–310. Dolansky, Fanny. “Playing with Gender: Girls, Dolls, and Adult Ideals in the Roman World.” Classical Antiquity 31.2 (2012): 256–92. Fallan, Kjetil. Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories. Berg, 2012. Folkmann, Mads Nygaard, and Hans-Christian Jensen. “Subjectivity in Self-Historicization: Design and Mediation of a ‘New Danish Modern’ Living Room Set.” Design and Culture 7.1 (2015): 65–84. Hansen, Per H. “Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern Furniture Design, 1930–1970.” The Business History Review 80.3 (2006): 449–83. Hedqvist, Hedvig, and Rebecka Tarschys. “Thoughts on the International Reception of Marimekko.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 149–71. Highmore, Ben. The Design Culture Reader. Routledge, 2008. Holland, Thomas W. Girls’ Toys of the Fifties and Sixties: Memorable Catalog Pages from the Legendary Sears Christmas Wishbooks, 1950-1969. Windmill, 1997. Hucal, Sarah. "Scandi Crush Saga: How Scandinavian Design Took over the World." Curbed, 23 Mar. 2016. <http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/23/11286010/scandinavian-design-arne-jacobsen-alvar-aalto-muuto-artek>. Jackson, Lesley. “Textile Patterns in an International Context: Precursors, Contemporaries, and Successors.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 44–83. Kline, Stephen. “The Making of Children’s Culture.” The Children’s Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: NYU P, 1998. 95–109. Lawrence, Sidney. “Declaration of Function: Documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Crusade, 1933-1950.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 65–77. Marshall, Jennifer Jane. Machine Art 1934. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. McGuire, Sheila. “Playing House: Sex-Roles and the Child’s World.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances : June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Meikel, Jeffrey L. “Domesticating Modernity: Ambivalence and Appropriation, 1920–1940.” Designing Modernity; the Arts of Reform and Persuasion. Ed. Wendy Kaplan. Thames & Hudson, 1995. 143–68. O’Brien, Marion, and Aletha C. Huston. “Development of Sex-Typed Play Behavior in Toddlers.” Developmental Psychology, 21.5 (1985): 866–71. Olivarez, Jennifer Komar, Jukka Savolainen, and Juulia Kauste. Finland: Designed Environments. Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Nordic Heritage Museum, 2014. Oswell, David. The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge UP, 2013. Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1–19. Punchard, Lorraine May. Child’s Play: Play Dishes, Kitchen Items, Furniture, Accessories. Punchard, 1982. Ranalli, Kristina. An Act Apart: Tea-Drinking, Play and Ritual. Master's thesis. U Delaware, 2013. Sears Corporate Archives. “What Is a Sears Modern Home?” n.d. <http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm>. "Target Announces New Design Partnership with Marimekko: It’s Finnish, Target Style." Target, 2 Mar. 2016. <http://corporate.target.com/article/2016/03/marimekko-for-target>. Teglasi, Hedwig. “Children’s Choices of and Value Judgments about Sex-Typed Toys and Occupations.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 18.2 (1981): 184–95. Thompson, Jane, and Alexandra Lange. Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes. Chronicle, 2010.

The copyrighting of digital augmentations (our data-flesh), their privatization and ownership by others from a vast distance that is simultaneously instantly telematically surmountable started simply enough. It was the initially innocuous corporatization of language and semiotics that started the deeper ontological flip, which placed the posthuman bits and parts over the posthuman that thought that it was running things. The posthumans in question, myself included, didn't help things much when, for instance, we all clicked an unthinking or unconcerned "yes" to Facebook® or Gmail®'s "terms and conditions of use" policies that gives them the real ownership and final say over those data based augments of sociality, speech, and memory. Today there is growing popular concern (or at least acknowledgement) over the surveillance of these augmentations by government, especially after the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. The same holds true for the dataveillance of data-flesh (i.e. Gmail® or Facebook® accounts) by private corporations for reasons of profit and/or at the behest of governments for reasons of "national security." While drawing a picture of this (bodily) state, of the intrusion through language of brands into our being and their coterminous policing of intelligible and iterative body boundaries and extensions, I want to address the next step in copyrighted augmentation, one that is current practice in professional sport, and part of the bourgeoning "anti-aging" industry, with rewriting of cellular structure and hormonal levels, for a price, on the open market. What I want to problematize is the contradiction between the rhetorical moralizing against upgrading the analogue-flesh, especially with respect to celebrity sports stars like Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriquez, all the while the "anti-aging" industry does the same without censor. Indeed, it does so within the context of the contradictory social messaging and norms that our data-flesh and electric augmentations receive to constantly upgrade. I pose the question of the contradiction between the messages given to our analogue-flesh and data-flesh in order to examine the specific site of commentary on professional sports stars and their practices, but also to point to the ethical gap that exists not just for (legal) performance enhancing drugs (PED), but also to show the link to privatized and copyrighted genomic testing, the dataveillance of this information, and subsequent augmentations that may be undertaken because of the results. Copyrighted Language and Semiotics as Gateway Drug The corporatization of language and semiotics came about with an intrusion of exclusively held signs from the capitalist economy into language. This makes sense if one want to make surplus value greater: stamp a name onto something, especially a base commodity like a food product, and build up the name of that stamp, however one will, so that that name has perceived value in and of itself, and then charge as much as one can for it. Such is the story of the lack of real correlation between the price of Starbucks Coffee® and coffee as a commodity, set by Starbucks® on the basis of the cultural worth of the symbols and signs associated with it, rather than by what they pay for the labor and production costs prior to its branding. But what happens to these legally protected stamps once they start acting as more than just a sign and referent to a subsection of a specific commodity or thing? Once the stamp has worth and a life that is socially determined? What happens when these stamps get verbed, adjectived, and nouned? Naomi Klein, in the book that the New York Times referred to as a "movement bible" for the anti-globalization forces of the late 1990s said "logos, by the force of ubiquity, have become the closest thing we have to an international language, recognized and understood in many more places than English" (xxxvi). But there is an inherent built-in tension of copyrighted language and semiotics that illustrates the coterminous problems with data- and analogue-flesh augments. "We have almost two centuries' worth of brand-name history under our collective belt, coalescing to create a sort of global pop-cultural Morse code. But there is just one catch: while we may all have the code implanted in our brains, we're not really allowed to use it" (Klein 176). Companies want their "brands to be the air you breathe in - but don't dare exhale" or otherwise try to engage in a two-way dialogue that alters the intended meaning (Klein 182). Private signs power first-world and BRIC capitalism, language, and bodies. I do not have a coffee in the morning; I have Starbucks®. I do not speak on a cellular phone; I speak iPhone®. I am not using my computer right now; I am writing MacBook Air®. I do not look something up, search it, or research it; I Google® it. Klein was writing before the everyday uptake of sophisticated miniaturized and mobile computing and communication devices. With the digitalization of our senses and electronic limbs this viral invasion of language became material, effecting both our data- and analogue-flesh. The trajectory? First we used it; then we wore it as culturally and socially demarcating clothing; and finally we no longer used copyrighted speech terms: it became an always-present augmentation, an adjective to the lexicon body of language, and thereby out of democratic semiotic control. Today Twitter® is our (140 character limited) medium of speech. Skype® is our sense of sight, the way we have "real" face-to-face communication. Yelp® has extended our sense of taste and smell through restaurant reviews. The iPhone® is our sense of hearing. And OkCupid® and/or Grindr® and other sites and apps have become the skin of our sexual organs (and the site where they first meet). Today, love at first sight happens through .jpeg extensions; our first sexual experience ranked on a scale of risk determined by the type of video feed file format used: was it "protected" enough to stop its "spread"? In this sense the corporatization of language and semiotics acted as the gateway drug to corporatized digital-flesh; from use of something that is external to us to an augmentation that is part of us and indeed may be in excess of us or any notion of a singular liberal subject.Replacement of Analogue-Flesh? Arguably, this could be viewed as the coming to be of the full replacement of the fleshy analogue body by what are, or started as digital augmentations. Is this what Marshall McLuhan meant when he spoke of the "electronic exteriorization of the central nervous system" through the growing complexity of our "electric extensions"? McLuhan's work that spoke of the "global village" enabled by new technologies is usually read as a euphoric celebration of the utopic possibilities of interconnectivity. What these misreadings overlook is the darker side of his thought, where the "cultural probe" picks up the warning signals of the change to come, so that a Christian inspired project, a cultural Noah’s Ark, can be created to save the past from the future to come (Coupland). Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Guy Debord have analyzed this replacement of the real and the changes to the relations between people—one I am arguing is branded/restricted—by offering us the terms simulacrum (Baudrillard), substitution (Virilio), and spectacle (Debord). The commonality which links Baudrillard and Virilio, but not Debord, is that the former two do not explicitly situate their critique as being within the loss of the real that they then describe. Baudrillard expresses that he can have a 'cool detachment' from his subject (Forget Foucault/Forget Baudrillard), while Virilio's is a Catholic moralist's cry lamenting the disappearance of the heterogeneous experiential dimensions in transit along the various axes of space and time. What differentiates Debord is that he had no qualms positioning his own person and his text, The Society of the Spectacle (SotS), as within its own subject matter - a critique that is limited, and acknowledged as such, by the blindness of its own inescapable horizon.This Revolt Will Be Copyrighted Yet today the analogue - at the least - performs a revolt in or possibly in excess of the spectacle that seeks its containment. How and at what site is the revolt by the analogue-flesh most viewable? Ironically, in the actions of celebrity professional sports stars and the Celebrity Class in general. Today it revolts against copyrighted data-flesh with copyrighted analogue-flesh. This is even the case when the specific site of contestation is (at least the illusion of) immortality, where the runaway digital always felt it held the trump card. A regimen of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and other PEDs purports to do the same thing, if not better, at the cellular level, than the endless youth paraded in the unaging photo employed by the Facebook or Grindr Bodies®. But with the everyday use and popularization of drugs and enhancement supplements like HGH and related PEDs there is something more fundamental at play than the economic juggernaut that is the Body Beautiful; more than fleshy jealousy of Photoshopped® electronic skins. This drug use represents the logical extension of the ethics that drive our tech-wired lives. We are told daily to upgrade: our sexual organs (OkCupid® or Grindr®) for a better, more accurate match; our memory (Google® services) for largeness and safe portability; and our hearing and sight (iPhone® or Skype®) for increase connectivity, engaging the "real" (that we have lost). These upgrades are controlled and copyrighted, but that which grows the economy is an especially favored moral act in an age of austerity. Why should it be surprising, then, that with the economic backing of key players of Google®—kingpin of the global for-profit dataveillance racket—that for $99.95 23andMe® will send one a home DNA test kit, which once returned will be analyzed for genetic issues, with a personalized web-interface, including "featured links." Analogue-flesh fights back with willing copyrighted dataveillance of its genetic code. The test and the personalized results allow for augmentations of the Angelina Jolie type: private testing for genetic markers, a double mastectomy provided by private healthcare, followed by copyrighted replacement flesh. This is where we find the biopolitics of data- and analogue-flesh, lead forth, in an ironic turn, by the Celebrity Class, whom depend for their income on the lives of their posthuman bodies. This is a complete reversal of the course Debord charts out for them: The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. (SotS) While the electronic global village was to have left the flesh-and-blood as waste, today there is resistance by the analogue from where we would least expect it - attempts to catch up and replant itself as ontologically prior to the digital through legal medical supplementation; to make the posthuman the posthuman. We find the Celebrity Class at the forefront of the resistance, of making our posthuman bodies as controlled augmentations of a posthuman. But there is a definite contradiction as well, specifically in the press coverage of professional sports. The axiomatic ethical and moral sentiment of our age to always upgrade data-flesh and analogue-flesh is contradicted in professional sports by the recent suspensions of Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez and the political and pundit critical commentary on their actions. Nancy Reagan to the Curbside: An Argument for Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez's "Just Say Yes to Drugs" Campaign Probably to the complete shock of most of my family, friends, students, and former lovers who may be reading this, I actually follow sports reporting with great detail and have done so for years. That I never speak of any sports in my everyday interactions, haven't played a team or individual sport since I could speak (and thereby use my voice to inform my parents that I was refusing to participate), and even decline amateur or minor league play, like throwing a ball of any kind at a family BBQ, leaves me to, like Judith Butler, "give an account of oneself." And this accounting for my sports addiction is not incidental or insignificant with respect either to how the posthuman present can move from a state of posthumanism to one of posthumanism, nor my specific interpellation into (and excess) in either of those worlds. Recognizing that I will not overcome my addiction without admitting my problem, this paper is thus a first-step public acknowledgement: I have been seeing "Dr. C" for a period of three years, and together, through weekly appointments, we have been working through this issue of mine. (Now for the sake of avoiding the cycle of lying that often accompanies addiction I should probably add that Dr. C is a chiropractor who I see for back and nerve damage issues, and the talk therapy portion, a safe space to deal with the sports addiction, was an organic outgrowth of the original therapy structure). My data-flesh that had me wired in and sitting all the time had done havoc to the analogue-flesh. My copyrighted augments were demanding that I do something to remedy a situation where I was unable to be sitting and wired in all the time. Part of the treatment involved the insertion of many acupuncture needles in various parts of my body, and then having an electric current run through them for a sustained period of time. Ironically, as it was the wired augmentations that demanded this, due to my immobility at this time - one doesn't move with acupuncture needles deep within the body - I was forced away from my devices and into unmediated conversation with Dr. C about sports, celebrity sports stars, and the recent (argued) infractions by Armstrong and Rodriguez. Now I say "argued" because in the first place are what A-Rod and Armstrong did, or are accused of doing, the use of PEDs, HGH, and all the rest (cf. Lupica; Thompson, and Vinton) really a crime? Are they on their way, or are there real threats of jail and criminal prosecution? And in the most important sense, and despite all the rhetoric, are they really going against prevailing social norms with respect to medical enhancement? No, no, and no. What is peculiar about the "witch-hunt" of A-Rod and Armstrong - their words - is that we are undertaking it in the first place, while high-end boutique medical clinics (and internet pharmacies) offer the same treatment for analogue-flesh. Fixes for the human in posthuman; ways of keeping the human up to speed; arguably the moral equivalent, if done so with free will, of upgrading the software for ones iOS device. If the critiques of Baudrillard and Virilio are right, we seem to find nothing wrong with crippling our physical bodies and social skills by living through computers and telematic technologies, and obsess over the next upgrade that will make us (more) faster and quicker (than the other or others), while we righteously deny the same process to the flesh for those who, in Debord's description, are the most complicit in the spectacle, to the supposedly most posthuman of us - those that have become pure spectacle (Debord), pure simulation (Baudrillard), a total substitution (Virilio). But it seems that celebrities, and sports celebrities in specific haven't gone along for the ride of never-ending play of their own signifiers at the expense of doing away with the real; they were not, in Debord's words, content with "specializing in the seemingly lived"; they wanted, conversely, to specialize in the most maximally lived flesh, right down to cellular regeneration towards genetic youth, which is the strongest claim in favor of taking HGH. It looks like they were prepared to, in the case of Armstrong, engage in the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" in the name of the flesh (BBC). But a doping program that can, for the most part, be legally obtained as treatment, and in the same city as A-Rod plays in and is now suspended for his "crimes" to boot (NY Vitality). This total incongruence between what is desired, sought, and obtained legally by members of their socioeconomic class, and many classes below as well, and is a direct outgrowth of the moral and ethical axiomatic of the day is why A-Rod and Armstrong are so bemused, indignant, and angry, if not in a state of outright denial that they did anything that was wrong, even while they admit, explicitly, that yes, they did what they are accused of doing: taking the drugs. Perhaps another way is needed to look at the unprecedentedly "harsh" and "long" sentences of punishment handed out to A-Rod and Armstrong. The posthuman governing bodies of the sports of the society of the spectacle in question realize that their spectacle machines are being pushed back at. A real threat because it goes with the grain of where the rest of us, or those that can buy in at the moment, are going. And this is where the talk therapy for my sports addiction with Dr. C falls into the story. I realized that the electrified needles were telling me that I too should put the posthuman back in control of my damaged flesh; engage in a (medically copyrighted) piece of performance philosophy and offset some of the areas of possible risk that through restricted techne 23andMe® had (arguably) found. Dr. C and I were peeved with A-Rod and Armstrong not for what they did, but what they didn't tell us. We wanted better details than half-baked admissions of moral culpability. We wanted exact details on what they'd done to keep up to their digital-flesh. Their media bodies were cultural probes, full in view, while their flesh bodies, priceless lab rats, are hidden from view (and likely to remain so due to ongoing litigation). These were, after all, big money cover-ups of (likely) the peak of posthuman science, and the lab results are now hidden behind an army of sports federations lawyers, and agents (and A-Rod's own army since he still plays); posthuman progress covered up by posthuman rules, sages, and agents of manipulation. Massive posthuman economies of spectacle, simulation, or substitution of the real putting as much force as they can bare on resurgent posthuman flesh - a celebrity flesh those economies, posthuman economies, want to see as utterly passive like Debord, but whose actions are showing unexpected posthuman alignment with the flesh. Why are the centers of posthumanist power concerned? Because once one sees that A-Rod and Armstrong did it, once one sees that others are doing the same legally without a fuss being made, then one can see that one can do the same; make flesh-and-blood keep up, or regrow and become more organically youthful, while OkCupid® or Grindr® data-flesh gets stuck with the now lagging Photoshopped® touchups. Which just adds to my desire to get "pumped up"; add a little of A-Rod and Armstrong's concoction to my own routine; and one of a long list of reasons to throw Nancy Reagan under the bus: to "just say yes to drugs." A desire that is tempered by the recognition that the current limits of intelligibility and iteration of subjects, the work of defining the bodies that matter that is now set by copyrighted language and copyrighted electric extensions is only being challenged within this society of the spectacle by an act that may give a feeling of unease for cause. This is because it is copyrighted genetic testing and its dataveillance and manipulation through copyrighted medical technology - the various branded PEDs, HGH treatments, and their providers - that is the tool through which the flesh enacts this biopolitical "rebellion."References Baudrillard, Jean. Forget Foucault/Forget Baudrillard. Trans Nicole Dufresne. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. ————. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. Cambridge: Semiotext(e), 1983. BBC. "Lance Armstong: Usada Report Labels Him 'a Serial Cheat.'" BBC Online 11 Oct. 2012. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/19903716›. Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Clark, Taylor. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture. New York: Back Bay, 2008. Coupland, Douglas. Marshall McLuhan. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2009. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red: 1977. Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1999. Lupica, Mike. "Alex Rodriguez Beginning to Look a Lot like Lance Armstrong." NY Daily News. 6 Oct. 2013. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/lupica-a-rod-tour-de-lance-article-1.1477544›. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964. NY Vitality. "Testosterone Treatment." NY Vitality. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://vitalityhrt.com/hgh.html›. Thompson, Teri, and Nathaniel Vinton. "What Does Alex Rodriguez Hope to Accomplish by Following Lance Armstrong's Legal Blueprint?" NY Daily News 5 Oct. 2013. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/a-rod-hope-accomplish-lance-blueprint-article-1.1477280›. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986.

We ask you now, reader, to put your mind, as a citizen of the Australian Commonwealth, to the facts presented in these pages. We ask you to study the problem, in the way that we present the case, from the Aborigines’ point of view. We do not ask for your charity; we do not ask you to study us as scientific-freaks. Above all, we do not ask for your “protection”. No, thanks! We have had 150 years of that! We ask only for justice, decency, and fair play. (Patten and Ferguson 3-4) Jack Patten and William Ferguson’s above declaration on “Plain Speaking” in Aborigines Claim Citizenship Rights! A Statement of the Case for the Aborigines Progressive Association (1938), outlining Aboriginal Australians view of colonisation and the call for Aboriginal self-determinacy, will be my guiding framework in writing this paper. I ask you to study the problem, as it is presented, from the viewpoint of an Indigenous woman who seeks to understand how “sorry” has been uttered in political domains as a word divorced from the moral freight attached to a history of “degrading, humiliating and exterminating” Aboriginal Australians (Patten and Ferguson 11). I wish to argue that the Opposition leader’s utterance of “sorry” in his 13 February 2008 “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament” was an indicator of the insidious ways in which colonisation has treated Aboriginal Australians as less than, not equal to, white Australians and to examine the ways in which this particular utterance of the word “sorry” is built on longstanding colonial frameworks that position ‘the Aborigine’ as peripheral in the representation of a national identity – a national identity that, as shown by the transcript of the apology, continues to romanticise settler values and ignore Indigenous rights. Nelson’s address tries to disassociate the word “sorry” from any moral attachment. The basis of his address is on constructing a national identity where all injustices are equal. In offering this apology, let us not create one injustice in our attempts to address another. (Nelson) All sorrys are equal, but some are more equal than others. Listening to Nelson’s address, words resembling those of Orwell’s ran through my head. The word “sorry” in relation to Indigenous Australians has taken on cultural, political, educational and economic proportions. The previous government’s refusal to utter the word was attached to the ways in which formations of rhetorically self-sufficient arguments of practicality, equality and justice “functioned to sustain and legitimate existing inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia” (Augoustinos, LeCouteur and Soyland 105). How then, I wondered as I nervously waited for Nelson to begin apologising, would he transform this inherited collective discursive practice of legitimised racism that upheld mainstream Australia’s social reality? The need for an apology, and the history of political refusal to give it, is not a simple classification of one event, one moment in history. The ‘act’ of removing children is not a singular, one-off event. The need to do, the justification and rationalisation of the doing and what that means now, the having done, as well as the impact on those that were left behind, those that were taken, those that were born after, are all bound up in this particular “sorry”. Given that reluctance of the previous government to admit injustices were done and still exist, this utterance of the word “sorry” from the leader of the opposition precariously sat between freely offering it and reluctantly giving it. The above quote from Nelson, and its central concern of not performing any injustice towards mainstream Australia (“let us not” [my italics]) very definitely defines this sorry in relation to one particular injustice (the removing of Indigenous children) which therefore ignores the surrounding and complicit colonialist and racist attitudes, policies and practices that both institutionalised and perpetuated racism against Australia’s Indigenous peoples. This comment also clearly articulates the opposition’s concern that mainstream Australia not be offended by this act of offering the word “sorry”. Nelson’s address and the ways that it constructs what this “sorry” is for, what it isn’t for, and who it is for, continues to uphold and legitimate existing inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. From the very start of Nelson’s “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament”, two specific clarifications were emphasised: the “sorry” was directed at a limited time period in history; and that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. Nelson defines this distinction: “two cultures; one ancient, proud and celebrating its deep bond with this land for some 50,000 years. The other, no less proud, arrived here with little more than visionary hope deeply rooted in gritty determination to build an Australian nation.” This cultural division maintains colonising discourses that define and label, legitimate and exclude groups and communities. It draws from the binary oppositions of self and other, white and black, civilised and primitive. It maintains a divide between the two predominant ideas of history that this country struggles with and it silences those in that space in between, ignoring for example, the effects of colonisation and miscegenation in blurring the lines between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’. Although acknowledging that Indigenous Australians inhabited this land for a good few thousand decades before the proud, gritty, determined visionaries of a couple of hundred years ago, the “sorry” that is to be uttered is only in relation to “the first seven decades of the 20th century”. Nelson establishes from the outset that any forthcoming apology, on behalf of “us” – read as non-Indigenous Anglo-Australians – in reference to ‘them’ – “those Aboriginal people forcibly removed” – is only valid for the “period within which these events occurred [which] was one that defined and shaped Australia”. My reading of this sectioning of a period in Australia’s history is that while recognising that certain colonising actions were unjust, specifically in this instance the removal of Indigenous children, this period of time is also seen as influential and significant to the growth of the country. What this does is to allow the important colonial enterprise to subsume the unjust actions by the colonisers by other important colonial actions. Explicit in Nelson’s address is that this particular time frame saw the nation of Australia reach the heights of achievements and is a triumphant period – an approach which extends beyond taking the highs with the lows, and the good with the bad, towards overshadowing any minor ‘unfortunate’ mistakes that might have been made, ‘occasionally’, along the way. Throughout the address, there are continual reminders to the listeners that the “us” should not be placed at a disadvantage in the act of saying “sorry”: to do so would be to create injustice, whereas this “sorry” is strictly about attempting to “address another”. By sectioning off a specific period in the history of colonised Australia, the assumption is that all that happened before 1910 and all that happened after 1970 are “sorry” free. This not only ignores the lead up to the official policy of removal, how it was sanctioned and the aftermath of removal as outlined in The Bringing Them Home Report (1997); it also prevents Indigenous concepts of time from playing a legitimate and recognised role in the construct of both history and society. Aboriginal time is cyclical and moves around important events: those events that are most significant to an individual are held closer than those that are insignificant or mundane. Aleksendar Janca and Clothilde Bullen state that “time is perceived in relation to the socially sanctioned importance of events and is most often identified by stages in life or historic relevance of events” (41). The speech attempts to distinguish between moments and acts in history: firmly placing the act of removing children in a past society and as only one act of injustice amongst many acts of triumph. “Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done in many, but not all cases, with the best of intentions” (Nelson). What was done is still being felt by Indigenous Australians today. And by differentiating between those that committed these actions and “our generation”, the address relies on a linear idea of time, to distance any wrongdoing from present day white Australians. What I struggle with here is that those wrongdoings continue to be felt according to Indigenous concepts of time and therefore these acts are not in a far away past but very much felt in the present. The need to not own these actions further entrenches the idea of separateness between Indigenous Australia and non-Indigenous Australia. The fear of being guilty or at blame evokes notions of wrong and right and this address is at pains not to do that – not to lay blame or evoke shame. Nelson’s address is relying on a national identity that has historically silenced and marginalised Indigenous Australians. If there is no blame to be accepted, if there is no attached shame to be acknowledged (“great pride, but occasionally shame” (Nelson)) and dealt with, then national identity is implicitly one of “discovery”, peaceful settlement and progress. Where are the Aboriginal perspectives of history in this idea of a national identity – then and now? And does this mean that colonialism happened and is now over? State and territory actions upon, against and in exclusion of Indigenous Australians are not actions that can be positioned as past discriminations; they continue today and are a direct result of those that preceded them. Throughout his address, Nelson emphasises the progressiveness of “today” and how that owes its success to the “past”: “In doing so, we reach from within ourselves to our past, those whose lives connect us to it and in deep understanding of its importance to our future”. By relying on a dichotomous approach – us and them, white and black, past and present – Nelson emphasises the distance between this generation of Australia and any momentary unjust actions in the past. The belief is that time moves on – away from the past and towards the future. That advancement, progression and civilisation are linear movements, all heading towards a more enlightened state. “We will be at our best today – and every day – if we pause to place ourselves in the shoes of others, imbued with the imaginative capacity to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect”. But where is the recognition that today’s experiences, the results of what has been created by the past, are also attached to the need to offer an apology? Nelson’s “we” (Anglo-Australians) are being asked to stop and think about how “they” (Aborigines) might see things differently to the mainstream norm. The implication here also is that “they” – members of the Stolen Generations – must be prepared to understand the position white Australia is coming from, and acknowledge the good that white Australia has achieved. Anglo-Australian pride and achievement is reinforced throughout the address as the basis on which our national identity is understood. Ignoring its exclusion and silencing of the Indigenous Australians to whom his “sorry” is directed, Nelson perpetuates this ideology here in his address: “In brutally harsh conditions, from the small number of early British settlers our non Indigenous ancestors have given us a nation the envy of any in the world”. This gift of a nation where there was none before disregards the acts of invasion, segregation, protection and assimilation that characterise the colonisation of this nation. It also reverts to romanticised settler notions of triumph over great adversities – a notion that could just as easily be attached to Indigenous Australians yet Nelson specifically addresses “our non Indigenous ancestors”. He does add “But Aboriginal Australians made involuntary sacrifices, different but no less important, to make possible the economic and social development of our modern [my emphasis] Australia.” Indigenous Australians certainly made voluntary sacrifices, similar to and different from those made by non Indigenous Australians (Indigenous Australians also went to both World Wars and fought for this nation) and a great deal of “our modern” country’s economic success was achieved on the backs of Blackfellas (Taylor 9). But “involuntary sacrifices” is surely a contradiction in terms, either intellectually shoddy or breathtakingly disingenuous. To make a sacrifice is to do it voluntarily, to give something up for a greater good. “Involuntary sacrifices”, like “collateral damage” and other calculatedly cold-blooded euphemisms, conveniently covers up the question of who was doing what to whom – of who was sacrificed, and by whom. In the attempt to construct a basis of equal contribution between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, as well as equal acts of struggle and triumphing, Nelson’s account of history and nation building draws from the positioning of the oppressors but tries to suppress any notion of racial oppression. It maintains the separateness of Indigenous experiences of colonisation from the colonisers themselves. His reiteration that these occasional acts of unjustness came from benevolent and charitable white Australians privileges non-Indigenous ways of knowing and doing over Indigenous ones and attempts to present them as untainted and innate as opposed to repressive, discriminatory and racist. We honour those in our past who have suffered and all those who have made sacrifices for us by the way we live our lives and shape our nation. Today we recommit to do so – as one people. (Nelson) The political need to identify as “one people” drives assimilation policies (the attitude at the very heart of removing Aboriginal children on the basis that they were Aboriginal and needed to be absorbed into one society of whites). By honouring everyone, and therefore taking the focus off any act of unjustness by non-Indigenous peoples on Indigenous peoples, Nelson’s narrative again upholds an idea of contemporary national identity that has not only romanticised the past but ignores the inequalities of the present day. He spends a good few hundred words reminding his listeners that white Australia deserves to maintain its hard won position. And there is no doubt he is talking to white Australia – his focus is on Western constructs of patriotism and success. He reverts to settler/colonial discourse to uphold ideas of equity and access: These generations considered their responsibilities to their country and one another more important than their rights. They did not buy something until they had saved up for it and values were always more important than value. Living in considerably more difficult times, they had dreams for our nation but little money. Theirs was a mesh of values enshrined in God, King and Country and the belief in something greater than yourself. Neglectful indifference to all they achieved while seeing their actions in the separations only, through the values of our comfortable, modern Australia, will be to diminish ourselves. In “the separations only…” highlights Nelson’s colonial logic, which compartmentalises time, space, people and events and tries to disconnect one colonial act from another. The ideology, attitudes and policies that allowed the taking of Indigenous children were not separate from all other colonial and colonising acts and processes. The desire for a White Australia, a clear cut policy which was in existence at the same time as protection, removal and assimilation policies, cannot be disassociated from either the taking of children or the creation of this “comfortable, modern Australia” today. “Neglectful indifference to all they achieved” could aptly be applied to Indigenous peoples throughout Australian history – pre and post invasion. Where is the active acknowledgment of the denial of Indigenous rights so that “these generations [of non-Indigenous Australians could] consider their responsibilities to their country and one another more important than their rights”? Nelson adheres to the colonialist national narrative to focus on the “positive”, which Patrick Wolfe has argued in his critique of settler colonialism, is an attempt to mask disruptive moments that reveal the scope of state and national power over Aboriginal Australians (33). After consistently reinforcing the colonial/settler narrative, Nelson’s address moves on to insert Indigenous Australians into a well-defined and confined space within a specific chapter of that narrative. His perfunctory overview of the first seven decades of the 20th century alludes to Protection Boards and Reserves, assimilation policies and Christianisation, all underlined with white benevolence. Having established the innocent, inherently humane and decent motivations of “white families”, he resorts to appropriating Indigenous people’s stories and experiences. In the retelling of these stories, two prominent themes in Nelson’s text become apparent. White fellas were only trying to help the poor Blackfella back then, and one need only glance at Aboriginal communities today to see that white fellas are only trying to help the poor Blackfella again. It is reasonably argued that removal from squalor led to better lives – children fed, housed and educated for an adult world of [sic] which they could not have imagined. However, from my life as a family doctor and knowing the impact of my own father’s removal from his unmarried teenaged mother, not knowing who you are is the source of deep, scarring sorrows the real meaning of which can be known only to those who have endured it. No one should bring a sense of moral superiority to this debate in seeking to diminish the view that good was being sought to be done. (Nelson) A sense of moral superiority is what motivates colonisation: it is what motivated the enforced removal of children. The reference to “removal from squalor” is somewhat reminiscent of the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act. Act No. 25, 1909, section 11(1) which states: The board may, in accordance with and subject to the provisions of the Apprentices Act, 1901, by indenture bind or cause to be bound the child of any aborigine, or the neglected child of any person apparently having an admixture of aboriginal blood in his veins, to be apprenticed to any master, and may collect and institute proceedings for the recovery of any wages payable under such indenture, and may expend the same as the board may think fit in the interest of the child. Every child so apprenticed shall be under the supervision of the board, or of such person that may be authorised in that behalf by the regulations. (144) Neglect was often defined as simply being Aboriginal. The representation that being removed would lead to a better life relies on Western attitudes about society and culture. It dismisses any notion of Indigenous rights to be Indigenous and defines a better life according to how white society views it. Throughout most of the 1900s, Aboriginal children that were removed to experience this better life were trained in positions of servants. Nelson’s inclusion of his own personal experience as a non Indigenous Australian who has experienced loss and sorrow sustains his textual purpose to reduce human experiences to a common ground, an equal footing – to make all injustices equal. And he finishes the paragraph off with the subtle reminder that this “sorry” is only for “those” Aboriginal Australians that were removed in the first seven decades of last century. After retelling the experience of one Indigenous person as told to the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, he retells the experience of an Indigenous woman as told to a non-Indigenous man. The appropriate protocols concerning the re-using of Indigenous knowledge and intellectual copyright appeared to be absent in this address. Not only does the individual remain unacknowledged but the potential for misappropriating Indigenous experiences for non Indigenous purposes is apparent. The insertion of the story dismisses the importance of the original act of telling, and the significance of the unspeakable through decades of silence. Felman presents the complexities of the survivor’s tale: “the victim’s story has to overcome not just the silence of the dead but the indelible coercive power of the oppressor’s terrifying, brutal silencing of the surviving, and the inherent speechless silence of the living in the face of an unthinkable, unknowable, ungraspable event” (227). In telling this story Nelson unravelled the foundation of equality he had attempted to resurrect. And his indication towards current happenings in the Northern Territory only served to further highlight the inequities that Indigenous peoples continue to face, resist and surpass. Nelson’s statement that “separation was then, and remains today, a painful but necessary part of public policy in the protection of children” is another reminder of the “indelible coercive power of the oppressor’s terrifying” potential to repeat history. The final unmasking of the hypocritical and contested nature of Nelson’s national ideology and narrative is in his telling of the “facts” – the statistics concerning Indigenous life expectancy, Indigenous infant mortality rates, “diabetes, kidney disease, hospitalisation of women from assault, imprisonment, overcrowding, educational underperformance and unemployment”. These statistics are a result not of what Nelson terms “existential aimlessness” (immediately preceding paragraph) but of colonisation – theft of land, oppression, abuse, discrimination, and lack of any rights whether citizenship or Aboriginal. These contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples are the direct linear result of the last two hundred years of white nation building. The address is concluded with mention of Neville Bonner, portrayed here as the perfect example of what reading, writing, expressing yourself with dignity and treating people with decency and courtesy can achieve. Bonner is presented as the ‘ideal’ Blackfella, a product of the assimilation period: he could read and write and was dignified, decent and courteous (and, coincidentally, Liberal). The inclusion of this reference to Bonner in the address may hint at the “My best friend is an Aborigine” syndrome (Heiss 71), but it also provides a discursive example to the listener of the ways in which ‘equalness’ is suggested, assumed, privileged or denied. It is a reminder, in the same vein of Patten and Ferguson’s fights for rights, that what is equal has always been apparent to the colonised. Your present official attitude is one of prejudice and misunderstanding … we are no more dirty, lazy stupid, criminal, or immoral than yourselves. Also, your slanders against our race are a moral lie, told to throw all the blame for your troubles on to us. You, who originally conquered us by guns against our spears, now rely on superiority of numbers to support your false claims of moral and intellectual superiority. After 150 years, we ask you to review the situation and give us a fair deal – a New Deal for Aborigines. The cards have been stacked against us, and we now ask you to play the game like decent Australians. Remember, we do not ask for charity, we ask for justice. Nelson quotes Bonner’s words that “[unjust hardships] can only be changed when people of non Aboriginal extraction are prepared to listen, to hear what Aboriginal people are saying and then work with us to achieve those ends”. The need for non-Indigenous Australians to listen, to be shaken out of their complacent equalness appears to have gone unheard. Fiumara, in her philosophy of listening, states: “at this point the opportunity is offered for becoming aware that the compulsion to win is due less to the intrinsic difficulty of the situation than to inhibitions induced by a non-listening language that prevents us from seeing that which would otherwise be clear” (198). It is this compulsion to win, or to at least not be seen to be losing that contributes to the unequalness of this particular “sorry” and the need to construct an equal footing. This particular utterance of sorry does not come from an acknowledged place of difference and its attached history of colonisation; instead it strives to create a foundation based on a lack of anyone being positioned on the high moral ground. It is an irony that pervades the address considering it was the coloniser’s belief in his/her moral superiority that took the first child to begin with. Nelson’s address attempts to construct the utterance of “sorry”, and its intended meaning in this specific context, on ‘equal’ ground: his representation is that we are all Australians, “us” and ‘them’ combined, “we” all suffered and made sacrifices; “we” all deserve respect and equal acknowledgment of the contribution “we” all made to this “enviable” nation. And therein lies the unequalness, the inequality, the injustice, of this particular “sorry”. This particular “sorry” is born from and maintains the structures, policies, discourses and language that led to the taking of Indigenous children in the first place. In his attempt to create a “sorry” that drew equally from the “charitable” as well as the “misjudged” deeds of white Australia, Nelson’s “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament” increased the experiences of inequality. Chow writes that in the politics of admittance the equal depends on “acceptance by permission … and yet, being ‘admitted’ is never simply a matter of possessing the right permit, for validation and acknowledgment must also be present for admittance to be complete” (36-37). References Augoustinos, Martha, Amanda LeCouteur, and John Soyland. “Self-Sufficient Arguments in Political Rhetoric: Constructing Reconciliation and Apologizing to the Stolen Generations.” Discourse and Society 13.1 (2002): 105-142.Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997.Aborigines Protection Act 1909: An Act to Provide for the Protection and Care of Aborigines; To Repeal the Supply of Liquors Aborigines Prevention Act; To Amend the Vagrancy Act, 1902, and the Police Offences (Amendment) Act, 1908; And for Purposes Consequent Thereon or Incidental Thereto. Assented to 20 Dec. 1909. Digital Collections: Books and Serial, National Library of Australia. 24 Mar. 2008 < http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.aus-vn71409-9x-s1-v >.Chow, Rey. “The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation and the Formation of Community in Frantz Fanon.” In Anthony C. Alessandrini, ed. Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, 1999. 34-56.Felman, Shoshana. “Theaters of Justice: Arendt in Jerusalem, the Eichmann Trial and the Redefinition of Legal Meaning in the Wake of the Holocaust.” Critical Inquiry 27.2 (2001): 201-238.Fiumara, Gemma Corradi. The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.Heiss, Anita. I’m Not a Racist But… UK: Salt Publishing, 2007.Janca, Aleksandar, and Clothilde Bullen. “Aboriginal Concept of Time and Its Mental Health Implications.” Australian Psychiatry 11 (Supplement 2003): 40-44.Nelson, Brendan. “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament.” 14 Feb. 2008 < http://www.liberal.org.au/info/news/detail/20080213_ WearesorryAddresstoParliament.php >.Patten, Jack, and William Ferguson. Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! A Statement for the Aborigines Progressive Association. Sydney: The Publicist, 1938.Taylor, Martin, and James Francis. Bludgers in Grass Castles: Native Title and the Unpaid Debts of the Pastoral Industry. Chippendale: Resistance Books, 1997.William, Ross. “‘Why Should I Feel Guilty?’ Reflections on the Workings of White-Aboriginal Relations.” Australian Psychologist 35.2 (2000): 136-142.Wolfe, Patrick. Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event. London and New York: Cassell, 1999.

Introduction While Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that Free Software is not Open Source, he is only half right—or only speaking about the question of motivation (the half that matters to him). The definition of Open Source, as enshrined in the Open Source Definition (OSD) is a nearly verbatim copy of the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Both the OSD and DFSG are practical articulations of Stallman’s Free Software Definition (FSD). Open Source, with a different political and philosophical basis, can only exist because the FSD is broad enough to allow for its translation into other terms yet defined enough to allow for a directed and robust social movement. As much as Stallman might want to deemphasize Open Source, he would never change the broadly defined definition of freedom that made its existence possible. This level of translatability within the domain of Free and Opens Source Software (FOSS) is echoed in the accessibly of its philosophies and technologies to groups from across the political spectrum. Recalibrating the broad meaning of freedom outlined in the FSD to align with their own philosophies and politics, these groups perceive FOSS as a model of openness and collaboration particularly well suited to meet their own goals. In this process of re-adoption and translation, FOSS has become the corporate poster child for capitalist technology giants like IBM, the technological and philosophical weapon of anti-corporate activists, and a practical template for a nascent movement to create an intellectual “Commons” to balance the power of capital. In these cases and others, FOSS’s broadly defined philosophy—given legal form in licenses—has acted as a pivotal point of inspiration for a diverse (and contradictory) set of alternative intellectual property instruments now available for other forms of creative work. Iconic Tactics As a site of technological practice, FOSS is not unique in its ability to take multiple lives and meanings. For example, Gyan Prakash (1999) in Another Reason_ _describes the way that many of the principles and practices of early twentieth century techno-science were translated, in ways similar to FOSS, during India’s colonial era. British colonizers who built bridges, trains, and hospitals pointed to their technological prowess as both a symbol of a superior scientific rationality and justification for their undemocratic presence in the subcontinent. Prakash describes the way that a cadre of Indian nationalists re-visioned the practice and philosophical approach to techno-science to justify and direct their anti-colonial national liberation movement. Techno-science, which was an instrument for colonialism and an icon for idea of progress, was nonetheless re-valued and redirected toward “another reason,” thus acting as a “tactic” productive of other social and political practices. We call this dynamic iconic tactic. FOSS has been deployed as an iconic tactic in a wide range of projects. FOSS philosophy simply states that it is the right of every user to use, modify, and distribute computer software for any purpose. The right to use, distribute, modify and redistribute derivative versions, the so called “four freedoms,” are based in and representative of an extreme form of anti-discrimination resistant to categorization into the typical “left, center and right” tripartite political schema. This element of non-discrimination, coupled with the broad nature of FOSS’s philosophical foundation, enables the easy adoption of FOSS technologies and facilitates its translatability. FOSS’s broadly defined freedom acts as an important starting point and one conceptual hinge useful in understanding the promiscuous circulation of FOSS as a set of technologies, signs, methodologies and philosophies. Also helpful is an analysis of the way in which this philosophical and legal form is animated and redirected in historically particular, and at times divergent, ways through the use of FOSS technologies and licensing schemes. It is to three contrasting examples of such transmutations that we now turn to. Translation in FOSS With over USD 81 billion in yearly revenue deriving in no small part from the companies vast patent and copyright holdings, IBM is an example of global capitalism whose bedrock is intellectual property. With a development methodology that IBM recognizes as more agile and profitable than proprietary models in many situations, IBM was quick to embrace FOSS. Hiring a cadre of FOSS developers to work in-house on FOSS software, IBM launched the first nationwide advertising campaign promoting the FOSS operating system GNU/Linux. In their first campaign, they highlighted the ideas of openness and freedom in ways that, unsurprisingly, reinforced their corporate goals. Featuring the recognizable Linux mascot Tux the penguin and a message of “Peace, Love, and Linux,” IBM connected using and buying FOSS-based enterprise solutions with 1960’s counter-cultural ideals of sharing, empowerment, and openness. IBM’s engagement with FOSS is representative of a much larger corporate movement to translate FOSS principles into a neoliberal language of market agility, consumer choice, and an “improved bottom line.” While their position, as the recent SCO and IBM court cases over Linux have demonstrated, is not uniformly shared in the corporate world, IBM is a highly visible example of a larger corporate push toward Free Software as the basis of a service-based business model. While the money behind IBM’s advertising machine makes their take on FOSS particularly visible, they hold no monopoly on the interpretation of FOSS’s meaning and importance. This is evidenced by the extensive use of FOSS as an iconic tactic by leftist activists around the world. Also bearing a three letter acronym, the Independent Media Centers (IMC) are a socio-political project whose mission and spirit are completely contrary to the goals of a large corporation like IBM. Indymedia is a worldwide collective of loosely affiliated grassroots online media websites and non-virtual spaces that allow activists to directly make, move, and “become” the media. IMCs are an important and integrated part of the anti-corporate and counter-globalization movement. In their work, IMC activists have aligned FOSS philosophy with their goals and visions for openness, media-reform, and large-scale socio-political justice. Like IBM, IMCs use existing FOSS software and create their own tools. IMC software, is, by charter, FOSS. As a volunteer organization with limited economic resources, FOSS has been crucial in its technology-heavy operations. Beyond use for pragmatic reasons, there is widespread support and admiration for FOSS, which is often identified as a revolutionary example of mutual aid, structural openness and the power of collaboration. The following quotes from the IMC’s online-meeting where the decision to formally adopt FOSS was made exemplify activist’s understandings of how FOSS can be used as a tool to further their political aspirations. xxxx: I assume it is safe to say that we are making this choice in order to try to choose the thing which has the least chance of benefiting any corporation, or any other form of hoarding in any way xxxx: There is a wonderful pool of very well-developed free software out there. Earlier, someone said that IMC is a revolutionary project, and free software is a revolutionary tool for it. I stan[d] very firmly behind using free software first These activists—and others in the IMC and anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, and counter-globalization movements—find inspiration in FOSS as proof of the possibility of successful alternatives to capitalist forms of production. In recent years, a political position—with a centrist political philosophy distinct from both capitalists like IBM and anti-capitalists like the IMC—has emerged with FOSS as its primary point of philosophical justification. This group is constituted by a growing number of North American and European scholars who have employed the metaphor of a “Commons” to argue for legally protected resources and knowledge for common use by all. The commons endeavor is one example of a larger “liberal” critique of the neoliberal face of “socially destructive unfettered capitalism” which is seen as a threat to democracy (Soros 2001). The information commons movement, largely spearheaded by Lawrence Lessig (1999; 2001; Creative Commons) and David Bollier (2002; Public Knowledge), explicitly points to FOSS as its inspiration. Within the Commons movement, FOSS has been tactically held up as proof that Commons are achievable and as a model of the process through which they can be created; the Creative Commons organization, a key institution within the Commons movement, has adopted FOSS-style licensing to foster and protect other other kinds of non-technical knowledge. Conclusion These three cases, which don’t exhaust the examples of translation, demonstrate how FOSS functions as an iconic tactic for a range of projects, which is not the simple result of the lexical ambiguity of the words free or open. The ability of FOSS to act as an “engine of translation” is one of the most compelling political aspects of FOSS and an important starting point in the assessment of the variable ways in which FOSS has been used as a set of technologies and an icon for openness—one we feel is often overlooked or obscured in popular and scholarly accounts on the broader implications of FOSS. The terms openness and freedom are often the key categories by which advocates, activists, journalists, and scholars approach the social and political implications of FOSS. While some accounts attribute a type of radical political intention to the domain of FOSS, others critique FOSS as indicative of late-capitalism’s drive to create and exploit free labor (Terranova 2000). Some problematically collapse the efforts of Lessig and Creative Commons with those of FOSS (Boyton 2004) obscuring some of the important differences between the goals and licenses of the groups. Certainly, the way in which FOSS is translated also shifts the ways that FOSS developers understand their own actions and motivations. However, commentators often interpret isolated cases of this process of inspiration, adoption, and re-valuation as indicative of the whole. In this early stage of research into FOSS, it behooves us to be wary of wholesale pronouncements on the social, political, and economic nature of FOSS. We should instead remain mindful of the range of socio-historical processes by which FOSS has enabled a diversity of ideas and practices of opennesses. We should be open to the idea that an analysis of the interplay between FOSS philosophy and practices as it travels through multiple social, economic and political terrains may reveal more than (first) meets the eye. About the Authors Biella Coleman is a cultural anthropologist from the University of Chicago currently writing her dissertation on the ethical dynamics and political implications of the Free and Open Source movement. She spent nearly three years doing research on the Debian project and studying hacker and technology activism in the Bay Area. Her next project draws from this research to investigate the use of expressive and human rights among psychiatric survivors as a political vector to make claims against forced treatment and to halt the global exportation of an American model of psychiatry. email: egcolema@uchicago.edu and biella@healthhacker.org Benjamin "Mako" Hill is a Free and Open Source Software developer and advocate. He is a director of Software in the Public Interest and a member of the Debian project—by most accounts the single largest Free Software project. In addition to volunteer and professional Free Software work, Hill writes and speaks extensively on issues of free software, intellectual property, collaboration, and technology. email: mako@bork.hampshire.edu Works Cited Boynton, Robert. ”The Tyranny of Copyright.”New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25COPYRIGHT.html Bollier, David. Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2002. Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. .The Future of ideas. New York: Random House, 2001. Prakash, Gyan. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Soros, George. Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism. New York: Public Affairs, 2000. Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Global Economy.” Social Text. (18): 2: 33-57, 2000. Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002. Weblinks: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines, http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_2004-01-22.cfm http://www.indymedia.org http://creativecommons.org/ http://www.publicknowledge.org/ Citation reference for this article MLA Style Coleman, Biella & Hill, Mako. "How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/02_Coleman-Hill.php>. APA Style Coleman, B. & Hill, M. (2004, Jul1). How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/02_Coleman-Hill.php>

While digital remix practices in music have been researched extensively in the last few years (see recently Jansen; Navas; Pinch and Athanasiades; Väkevä), the specific challenges and skills that are central to remixing are still not well understood (Borschke 90). As writers like Demers, Lessig, and Théberge argue, the fact that remixers rework already existing songs rather than building a track from scratch, often means they are perceived as musical thieves or parasites rather than creative artists. Moreover, as writers like Borschke and Rodgers argue, because remixers make use of digital audio workstations to produce and rework their sounds, their practices tend to be seen as highly automated, offering relatively little by way of musical and creative challenges, especially compared to more traditional (electro)acoustic forms of music-making. An underestimation of skill is problematic, however, because, as my own empirical research shows, creative skills and challenges are important to the way digital remixers themselves experience and value their practice. Drawing from virtual ethnographic research within the online remix communities of Indaba Music, this article argues that, not despite but because remixers start from already existing songs and because they rework these songs with the help of digital audio workstations, a particular set of creative abilities becomes foregrounded, namely: ‘fluency’ and ‘flexibility’ (Gouzouasis; Guilford, “Creativity Research”, Intelligence, “Measurement”). Fluency, the way the concept is used here, refers to the ability to respond to, and produce ideas for, a wide variety of musical source materials, quickly and easily. Flexibility refers to the ability to understand, and adapt these approaches to, the ‘musical affordances’ (Gibson; Windsor and De Bézenac) of the original song, that is: the different musical possibilities and constraints the source material provides. For remixers, fluency and flexibility are not only needed in order to be able to participate in these remix contests, they are also central to the way they value and evaluate each other’s work.Researching Online Remix ContestsAs part of a larger research project on online music practices, between 2011 and 2012, I spent eighteen months conducting virtual ethnographic research (Hine) within several remix competitions hosted on online music community Indaba Music. Indaba is not the only online community where creative works can be exchanged and discussed. For this research, however, I have chosen to focus on Indaba because, other than in a remix community like ccMixter for example, competitions are very much central to the Indaba community, thus making it a good place to investigate negotiations of skills and techniques. Also, unlike a community like ACIDplanet which is tied explicitly to Sony’s audio software program ACID Pro, Indaba is not connected to any particular audio workstation, thus providing an insight into a relatively broad variety of remix practices. During my research on Indaba, I monitored discussions between participants, listened to work that had been uploaded, and talked to remixers via personal messaging. In addition to my daily monitoring, I also talked to 21 remixers more extensively through Skype interviews. These interviews were semi-structured, and lasted between 50 minutes and 3.5 hours, sometimes spread over multiple sessions. During these interviews, remixers not only talked about their practices, they also shared work in progress with me by showing their remixes on screen or by directing a webcam to their instruments while they played, recorded, or mixed their material. All the remixers who participated in these interviews granted me permission to quote them and to use the original nicknames or personal names they use on Indaba in this publication. Besides the online observations and interviews, I also participated in three remix competitions myself, in order to gain a better understanding of what it means to be part of a remix community and to see what kind of challenges and abilities are involved. In the online remix contests of Indaba, professional artists invite remixers to rework a song and share and discuss these works within the community. For the purpose of these contests, artists provide separate audio files (so-called ‘stems’) for different musical elements such as voice, drums, bass, or guitar. Remixers can produce their tracks by rearranging these stems, or they can add new audio material, such as beats, chords, and rhythms, as long as this material is not copyrighted. Remixers generally comply with this rule. During the course of a contest, remixers upload their work to the website and discuss and share the results with other remixers. A typical remix contest draws between 200 or 300 participants. These participants are mostly amateur musicians or semi-professionals in the sense that they do not make a living with their creative practices, but rather participate in these contests as a hobby. A remix contest normally lasts for four or five weeks. After that time, the hosting artist chooses a winner and the remixers move on to another contest, hosted by a different artist and featuring a new song, sometimes from a completely different musical genre. It is partly because of this move from contest to contest that fluency and flexibility can be understood as central abilities within these remix practices. Fluency and flexibility are concepts adopted from the work of Joy Paul Guilford (“Creativity Research”, Intelligence, “Measurement”) who developed them in his creativity research from the 1950s onwards. For Guilford, fluency and flexibility are part of divergent-production abilities, those abilities we need in order to be able to deal with open questions or tasks, in which multiple solutions or answers are possible, in a quick and effective way. Within creativity research, divergent-production abilities have mainly been measured and evaluated quantitatively. In music related studies, for example, researchers have scored and assessed so-called fluency and flexibility factors in the music practices of children and adults and compared them to other creative abilities (Webster). For the purpose of this article, however, I do not wish to approach fluency and flexibility quantitatively. Rather, I would like to show that in online remix practices, fluency and flexibility, as creative abilities, become very much foregrounded. Gouzouasis already alludes to this possibility, pointing out that, in digital music practices, fluency might be more important than the ability to read and write traditional music notation. Gouzouasis’ argument, however, does not refer to a specific empirical case. Also, it does not reflect on how digital musicians themselves consider these abilities central to their own practices. Looking at online remix competitions, however, this last aspect becomes clear.FluencyFor Guilford, ‘fluency’ can be understood as the ability to produce a response, or multiple responses, to an open question or task quickly and easily (“Creativity Research”, Intelligence, “Measurement”). It is about making associations, finding different uses or purposes for certain source materials, and combining separate elements into organised phrases and patterns. Based on this definition, it is not difficult to see a link with remix competitions, in which remixers are asked to come up with a musical response to a given song within a limited time frame. Online remix contests are essentially a form of working on demand. It is the artist who invites the audience to remix a song. It is also the artist who decides which song can be remixed and which audio files can be used for that mix. Remixers who participate in these contests are usually not fans of these artists. Often they do not even know the song before they enter a competition. Instead, they travel from contest to contest, taking on many different remix opportunities. For every competition, then, remixers have to first familiarise themselves with the source material, and then try to come up with a creative response that is not only different from the original, but also different from all the other remixes that have already been uploaded. Remixers do not consider this a problem, but embrace it as a challenge. As Moritz Breit, one of the remixers, explained to me: “I like remixing [on Indaba] because it’s a challenge. You get something and have to make something different out of it, and later people will tell you how you did.” Or as hüpersonique put it: “It’s really a challenge. You hear a song and you say: ‘OK, it’s not my taste. But it’s good quality and if I could do something in my genre that would be very interesting’.” If these remixers consider the competitions to be a challenge, it is mainly because these contests provide an exercise of call and response. On Indaba, remixers apply different tempos, timbres, and sounds to a song, they upload and discuss work in progress, and they evaluate and compare the results by commenting on each other’s work. While remixers officially only need to develop one response, in practice they tend to create multiple ideas which they either combine in a single eclectic mix or otherwise include in different tracks which they upload separately. Remixers even have their own techniques in order to stimulate a variety of responses. Some remixers, for example, told me how they expose themselves to a large number of different songs and artists before they start remixing, in order to pick up different ideas and sounds. Others told me how they prefer not to listen to the original song, as it might diminish their ability to move away from it. Instead, they download only one or two of the original stems (usually the vocals) and start improvising around those sounds, without ever having heard the original song as a whole. As Ola Melander, one of the remixers, explained: “I never listen to it. I just load [the vocals] and the drum tracks. [....] I have to do it [in] my own style. [….] I don’t want that the original influences it, I want to make the chords myself, and figure out what it will sound like.” Or as Stretched Mind explained to me: “I listen to the vocal stem, only that, so no synths, no guitars, just pure vocal stems, nothing else. And I figure out what could fit with that.” On Indaba, being able to respond to, and associate around, the original track is considered to be more important than what Guilford calls ‘elaboration’ (“Measurement” 159). For Guilford, elaboration is the ability to turn a rough outline into a detailed and finished whole. It is basically a form of fine tuning. In the case of remixing, this fine tuning is called ‘mastering’ and it is all about getting exactly the right timbre, dynamics, volume, and balance in a track in order to create a ‘perfect’ sounding mix. On Indaba, only a select group of remixers is actually interested in such a professional form of elaboration. As Moritz Breit told me: “It’s not that you have like a huge bunch of perfectly mastered submissions. So nobody is really expecting that from you.” Indeed, in the comment section remixers tend to say less about audio fidelity than about how they like a certain approach. Even when a critical remark is made about the audio quality of a mix, these criticisms are often preceded or followed by encouraging comments which praise the idea behind the track or applaud the way a remixer has brought the song into a new direction. In short, the comments are often directed more towards fluency than towards elaboration, showing that for many of these remixers the idea of a response, any response, is more important than creating a professional or sellable track.Being able to produce a musical response is also more important on Indaba than having specific musical instrument skills. Most remixers work with digital audio workstations, such as Cubase, Logic Pro, and Pro Tools. These software programs make it possible to manipulate and produce sounds in ways that may include musical instruments, but do not necessarily involve them. As Hugill writes, with these programs “a sound source could be a recording, a live sound, an acoustic instrument, a synthesizer, the human body, etc. In fact, any sounding object can be a sound source” (128). As such, remix competitions tend to draw a large variety of different participants, with a wide range of musical backgrounds and instrument skills. Some remixers on Indaba create their remixes by making use of sample libraries and loops. Others, who have the ability, also add sounds with instruments such as drums, guitars, or violins, which they record with microphones or, in the case of electronic or digital instruments, plug directly into their personal computers. Remixers who are confident about their instrument skills improvise around the original tracks in real-time, while less confident players record short segments, which they then alter and correct afterwards with their audio programs. Within the logic of these digital audio workstation practices, these differences are not significant, as all audio input merely functions as a starting point, needing to be adjusted, layered, combined, and recombined afterwards in order to create the final mix. For the contestants themselves these differences are also not so significant, as contestants are still, in their own ways, involved in the challenge of responding to and associating around the original stems, regardless of the specific techniques or instruments used. The fact that remixers are open to different methods and techniques does not mean, however, that every submission is considered to be as valid as any other. Remixers do have strong opinions about what is a good remix and what is not. Looking at the comments contestants give on each other’s work, and the way they talk about their practices during interviews, it becomes clear that remixers find it important that a remix somehow fits the original source material. As hüpersonique explained: “A lot of [remixes] don’t really match the vocals (…) and then it sounds not that good.” From this perspective, remixers not only need to be fluent, they also need to be flexible towards their source material. FlexibilityFor Guilford, flexibility is the readiness to change direction or method (Intelligence, “Measurement”). It is, as Arnold writes, “facilitated by having a great many tricks in your bag, knowing lots of techniques, [and] having broad experience” (129). In music, flexibility can be understood as the ability to switch easily between different sounds, rhythms, and approaches, in order to achieve a desired musical effect. Guilford distinguishes between two forms of flexibility: ‘spontaneous flexibility’, when a subject chooses himself to switch between different approaches, and ‘adaptive flexibility’ when a switch in approach is necessary or preferred to fit a certain task (“Measurement” 158). While both forms of flexibility can be found on Indaba, adaptive flexibility is seen as a particularly important criterion of being a skilled remixer, as it shows that a remixer is able to understand, and react to, the musical affordances of the original track. The idea that music has affordances is not new. As Windsor and De Bézenac argue, building on Gibson’s original theory of affordances, even in the most free expressive jazz improvisations, there are certain cues that make us understand if a solo is “going with” or “going against” the shared context, and it is these cues that guide a musician through an improvisation (111). The same is true for remix practices. As Regelski argues, any form of music rearranging or appropriation “requires considerable understanding of music’s properties – and the different affordances of those properties” (38). Even when remixers only use one of the original stems, such as the vocals, they need to take into account, for example, the tempo of the song, the intensity of the voice, the chord patterns on which the vocals are based, and the mood or feeling the singer is trying to convey. A skilled remixer, then, builds his or her ideas on top of that so that they strengthen and not diminish these properties. On Indaba, ironic or humoristic remixers too are expected to consider at least some of the basic features of the original track, such as its key or its particular form of musical phrasing. Remixes in which these features are purposely ignored are often not appreciated by the community. As Tim Toz, one of the remixers, explained: “There’s only so much you can do, I think, in the context of a melody plus the way the song was originally sung. […] I hear guys trying to bend certain vocal cadences into other kinds of grooves, and it somehow doesn’t work […], it [begins] to sound unnatural.” On Indaba, remixers complement each other when they find the right approach to the original track. They also critique each other when an approach does not fit the original song, when it does not go along with the ‘feel’ of the track, or when it seem to be out of key or sync with the vocals. By discussing each other’s tracks, remixers not only collectively explore the limits and possibilities of a song, they also implicitly discuss their abilities to hear those possibilities and be able to act on them appropriately. What remixers need in order to be able to do this is what Hugill calls, ‘aural awareness’ (15): the ability to understand how sound works, both in a broad and in-depth way. While aural awareness is important for any musician, remixers are especially reliant on it, as their work is centred around the manipulation and extension of already existing sounds (Hugill). In order to be able to move from contest to contest, remixers need to have a broad understanding of how different musical styles work and the kind of possibilities they afford. At the same time they also need to know, at a more granular level, how sounds interact and how small alterations of chords, timbres, or rhythms can change the overall feel of a track. ConclusionRemix competitions draw participants with a wide variety of musical backgrounds who make use of a broad range of instruments and techniques. The reason such a diverse group is able to participate and compete together is not because these practices do not require musical skill, but rather because remix competitions draw on particular kinds of abilities which are not directly linked to specific methods or techniques. While it might not be necessary to produce a flawless track or to be able to play musical material in real-time, remixers do need to be able to respond to a wide variety of source materials, in a quick and effective way. Also, while it might not be necessary for remixers to be able to produce a song from scratch, they do need to be able to understand, and adapt to, the musical affordances different songs provide. In order to be able to move from contest to contest, as true musical chameleons, remixers need a broad and in-depth understanding of how sound works in different musical contexts and how particular musical responses can be achieved. As soon as remixers upload a track, it is mainly these abilities that will be judged, discussed, and evaluated by the community. In this way fluency and flexibility are not only central abilities in order to be able to participate in these remix competitions, they are also important yardsticks by which remixers measure and evaluate both their own work and the achievements of their peers.AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Renée van de Vall, Karin Wenz, and Dennis Kersten for their comments on early drafts of this article. Parts of this research have, in an earlier stage, been presented during the IASPM International Conference for the Study of Popular Music in Gijon, Spain 2013. ReferencesArnold, John E. “Education for Innovation.” A Source Book for Creative Thinking. Eds. Sidney Jay Parnes and Harold F. Harding. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962.Borschke, Margie. Rethinking the Rhetoric of Remix. Copies and Material Culture in Digital Networks. PhD Thesis U of New South Wales, 2012.Demers, Joanna. Steal This Music. How Intellectual Property Law Affects Musical Creativity. Athens: The U of Georgia P, 2006. Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986. Gouzouasis, Peter. “Fluency in General Music and Arts Technologies: Is the Future of Music a Garage Band Mentality?” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 4. 2 (2005). 26 Aug. 2012 .Guilford, Joy Paul. “Creativity: It’s Measurement and Development.” A Source Book for Creative Thinking. Eds. Sidney Jay Parnes and Harold F. Harding. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962. Guilford, Joy Paul. “Creativity Research: Past, Present and Future.” Frontiers of Creativity Research. Beyond the Basics. Ed. Scott G. Isaksen. Buffalo: Bearly Limited, 1987 [1950]. 33–65. Guilford, Joy Paul. The Nature of Human Intelligence. London: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Hine, Christine. Virtual Ethnography. London: Sage, 2000. Hugill, Andrew. The Digital Musician. New York: Routledge, 2008.Jansen, Bas. Where Credit is Due: Cultural Practices of Recorded Music. PhD Thesis U of Amsterdam, 2011. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix. Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. London: Bloomsbury, 2008. Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory. The Aesthetics of Sampling. New York: Springer Wien, 2012.Pinch, Trevor, and Katherine Athanasiades. “Online Music Sites as Sonic Sociotechnical Communities: Identity, Reputation, and Technology at ACIDplanet.com.” The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Eds. Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. 480–505.Regelski, Thomas A. “Amateuring in Music and its Rivals.” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 6. 3 (2007): 22–50. Rodgers, Tara. “On the Process and Aesthetics of Sampling in Electronic Music Production.” Organised Sound 8.3 (2003): 313–20. Théberge, Paul. “Technology, Creative Practice and Copyright.” Music and Copyright. Second Edition. Eds. Simon Frith and Lee Marshall. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004. 139–56. Väkevä, Lauri. “Garage Band or GarageBand®? Remixing Musical Futures.” British Journal of Music Education 27. 1 (2010): 59–70.Webster, Peter R. “Research on Creative Thinking in Music: The Assessment Literature.” Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning. Ed. Richard Colwell. New York: Shirmer, 1992. 266–80. Windsor, W. Luke, and Christophe de Bézenac. “Music and Affordances.” Musicae Scientiae 16. 1 (2012): 102–20.

As the distinction between disclosure-fuelled celebrity and lasting fame becomes difficult to discern, the “based on a true story” label has gained a particular traction among readers and viewers. This is despite much public approbation and private angst sometimes resulting from such disclosure as “little in the law or in society protects people from the consequences of others’ revelations about them” (Smith 537). Even fiction writers can stray into difficult ethical and artistic territory when they disclose the private facts of real lives—that is, recognisably biographical information—in their work, with autoethnographic fiction where authors base their fiction on their own lives (Davis and Ellis) not immune as this often discloses others’ stories (Ellis) as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously counselled writers to take their subjects from life and, moreover, to look to the singular, specific life, although this then had to be abstracted: “Begin with an individual, and before you know it, you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing” (139). One of the problems when assessing fiction through this lens, however, is that, although many writers are inspired in their work by an actual life, event or historical period, the resulting work is usually ultimately guided by literary concerns—what writers often term the quest for aesthetic truth—rather than historical accuracy (Owen et al. 2008). In contrast, a biography is, and continues to be, by definition, an accurate account of a real persons’ life. Despite postmodern assertions regarding the relativity of truth and decades of investigation into the incorporation of fiction into biography, other non-fiction texts and research narratives (see, for instance: Wyatt), many biographers attest to still feeling irrevocably tied to the factual evidence in a way that novelists and the scriptors of biographically-based fictional television drama, movies and theatrical pieces do not (Wolpert; Murphy; Inglis). To cite a recent example, Louis Nowra’s Ice takes the life of nineteenth-century self-made entrepreneur and politician Malcolm McEacharn as its base, but never aspires to be classified as creative nonfiction, history or biography. The history in a historical novel is thus often, and legitimately, skewed or sidelined in order to achieve the most satisfying work of art, although some have argued that fiction may uniquely represent the real, as it is able to “play […] in the gap between the narratives of history and the actualities of the past” (Nelson n.p.). Fiction and non-fictional forms are, moreover, increasingly intermingling and intertwining in content and intent. The ugly word “faction” was an attempt to suggest that the two could simply be elided but, acknowledging wide-ranging debates about whether literature can represent the complexities of life with any accuracy and post-structuralist assertions that the idea of any absolute truth is outmoded, contemporary authors play with, and across, these boundaries, creating hybrid texts that consciously slide between invention and disclosure, but which publishers, critics and readers continue to define firmly as either fiction or biography. This dancing between forms is not particularly new. A striking example was Marion Halligan’s 2001 novel The Fog Garden which opens with a personal essay about the then recent death of her own much-loved husband. This had been previously published as an autobiographical memoir, “Cathedral of Love,” and again in an essay collection as “Lapping.” The protagonist of the novel is a recently widowed writer named Clare, but the inclusion of Halligan’s essay, together with the book’s marketing campaign which made much of the author’s own sadness, encourages readers to read the novel as a disclosure of the author’s own personal experience. This is despite Halligan’s attempt to keep the two separate: “Clare isn’t me. She’s like me. Some of her experience, terrors, have been mine. Some haven’t” (Fog Garden 9). In such acts of disclosure and denial, fiction and non-fiction can interrogate, test and even create each other, however quite vicious criticism can result when readers feel the boundaries demarking the two are breached. This is most common when authors admit to some dishonesty in terms of self-disclosure as can be seen, for instance, in the furore surrounding highly inflated and even wholly fabricated memoirs such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, Margaret B. Jones’s Love and Consequences and Misha Defonseca’s A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years. Related problems and anxieties arise when authors move beyond incorporating and disclosing the facts of their own lives in memoir or (autobiographical) fiction, to using the lives of others in this way. Daphne Patai sums up the difference: “A person telling her life story is, in a sense, offering up her self for her own and her listener’s scrutiny […] Whether we should appropriate another’s life in this way becomes a legitimate question” (24–5). While this is difficult but seemingly manageable for non-fiction writers because of their foundational reliance on evidence, this anxiety escalates for fiction writers. This seems particularly extreme in relation to how audience expectations and prior knowledge of actual events can shape perceptions and interpretations of the resulting work, even when those events are changed and the work is declared to be one of fiction. I have discussed elsewhere, for instance, the difficult terrain of crafting fiction from well-known criminal cases (Brien, “Based on a True Story”). The reception of such work shows how difficult it is to dissociate creative product from its source material once the public and media has made this connection, no matter how distant that finished product may be from the original facts.As the field of biography continues to evolve for writers, critics and theorists, a study of one key text at a moment in that evolution—Jill Shearer’s play Georgia and its reliance on disclosing the life of artist Georgia O’Keeffe for its content and dramatic power—reveals not only some of the challenges and opportunities this close relationship offers to the writers and readers of life stories, but also the pitfalls of attempting to dissemble regarding artistic intention. This award-winning play has been staged a number of times in the past decade but has attracted little critical attention. Yet, when I attended a performance of Georgia at La Boite Theatre in Brisbane in 1999, I was moved by the production and admiring of Shearer’s writing which was, I told anyone who would listen, a powerfully dramatic interpretation of O’Keeffe’s life, one of my favourite artists. A full decade on, aspects of the work and its performance still resonate through my thinking. Author of more than twenty plays performed throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as on Broadway, Shearer was then (and is) one of Australia’s leading playwrights, and I judged Georgia to be a major, mature work: clear, challenging and confident. Reading the Currency Press script a year or so after seeing the play reinforced for me how distinctive and successful a piece of theatre Shearer had created utilising a literary technique which has been described elsewhere as fictionalised biography—biography which utilises fictional forms in its presentation but stays as close to the historical record as conventional biography (Brien, The Case of Mary Dean).The published version of the script indeed acknowledges on its title page that Georgia is “inspired by the later life of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe” (Shearer). The back cover blurb begins with a quote attributed to O’Keeffe and then describes the content of the play entirely in terms of biographical detail: The great American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is physically, emotionally and artistically debilitated by her failing eyesight. Living amidst the Navajo spiritual landscape in her desert home in New Mexico, she becomes prey to the ghosts of her past. Her solitude is broken by Juan, a young potter, whose curious influence on her life remains until her death at 98 (Georgia back cover). This short text ends by unequivocally reinforcing the relation between the play and the artist’s life: “Georgia is a passionate play that explores with sensitivity and wry humour the contradictions and the paradoxes of the life of Georgia O’Keeffe” (Georgia back cover). These few lines of plot synopsis actually contain a surprisingly large number of facts regarding O’Keeffe’s later life. After the death of her husband (the photographer and modern art impresario Alfred Steiglitz whose ghost is a central character in the play), O’Keeffe did indeed relocate permanently to Abiquiú in New Mexico. In 1971, aged 84, she was suffering from an irreversible degenerative disease, had lost her central vision and stopped painting. One autumn day in 1973, Juan Hamilton, a young potter, appeared at her adobe house looking for work. She hired him and he became her lover, closest confidante and business manager until her death at 98. These facts form not only the background story but also much of the riveting content for Georgia which, as the published script’s introduction states, takes as its central themes: “the dilemma of the artist as a an older woman; her yearning to create against the fear of failing artistic powers; her mental strength and vulnerability; her sexuality in the face of physical deterioration; her need for companionship and the paradoxical love of solitude” (Rider vii). These issues are not only those which art historians identify as animating the O’Keeffe’s later life and painting, but ones which are discussed at length in many of the biographies of the artist published from 1980 to 2007 (see, for instance: Arrowsmith and West; Berry; Calloway and Bry; Castro; Drohojowska-Philp; Eisler; Eldredge; Harris; Hogrefe; Lisle; Peters; Reily; Robinson).Despite this clear focus on disclosing aspects of O’Keeffe’s life, both the director’s and playwright’s notes prefacing the published script declare firmly that Georgia is fiction, not biography. While accepting that these statements may be related to copyright and privacy concerns, the stridency of the denials of the biography label with its implied intention of disclosing the facts of a life, are worthy of analysis. Although noting that Georgia is “about the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe”, director of the La Boite production Sue Rider asserts that not only that the play moves “beyond the biographical” (vii) but, a few pages later, that it is “thankfully not biography” (xii). This is despite Rider’s own underscoring of the connection to O’Keeffe by setting up an exhibition of the artist’s work adjacent to the theatre. Shearer, whose research acknowledgments include a number of works about O’Keeffe, is even more overtly strident in her denial of any biographical links stating that her characters, “this Juan, Anna Marie and Dorothy Norman are a work of dramatic fiction, as is the play, and should be taken as such” (xiii).Yet, set against a reading of the biographies of the artist, including those written in the intervening decade, Georgia clearly and remarkably accurately discloses the tensions and contradictions of O’Keeffe’s life. It also draws on a significant amount of documented biographical data to enhance the dramatic power of what is disclosed by the play for audiences with this knowledge. The play does work as a coherent narrative for a viewer without any prior knowledge of O’Keeffe’s life, but the meaning of the dramatic action is enhanced by any biographical knowledge the audience possesses. In this way, the play’s act of disclosure is reinforced by this externally held knowledge. Although O’Keeffe’s oeuvre is less well known and much anecdotal detail about her life is not as familiar for Australian viewers as for those in the artist’s homeland, Shearer writes for an international as well as an Australian audience, and the program and adjacent exhibition for the Brisbane performance included biographical information. It is also worth noting that large slabs of biographical detail are also omitted from the play. These omissions to disclosure include O’Keeffe’s early life from her birth in 1887 in Wisconsin to her studies in Chicago and New York from 1904 to 1908, as well as her work as a commercial artist and art teacher in Texas and other Southern American states from 1912 to 1916. It is from this moment in 1916, however, that the play (although opening in 1946) constructs O’Keeffe’s life right through to her death in 1986 by utilising such literary devices as flashbacks, dream sequences and verbal and visual references.An indication of the level of accuracy of the play as biographical disclosure can be ascertained by unpacking the few lines of opening stage directions, “The Steiglitz’s suite in the old mid-range Shelton Hotel, New York, 1946 ... Georgia, 59, in black, enters, dragging a coffin” (1). In 1946, when O’Keeffe was indeed aged 59, Steiglitz died. The couple had lived part of every year at the Shelton Towers Hotel at 525 Lexington Avenue (now the New York Marriott East Side), a moderately priced hotel made famous by its depiction in O’Keeffe’s paintings and Steiglitz’s photographs. When Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis, O’Keeffe was spending the summer in New Mexico, but she returned to New York where her husband died on 13 July. This level of biographical accuracy continues throughout Georgia. Halfway through the first page “Anita, 52” enters. This character represents Anita Pollitzer, artist, critic and O’Keeffe’s lifelong friend. The publication of her biography of O’Keeffe, A Woman on Paper, and Georgia’s disapproval of this, is discussed in the play, as are their letters, which were collected and published in 1990 as Lovingly, Georgia (Gibiore). Anita’s first lines in the play after greeting her friend refer to this substantial correspondence: “You write beautifully. I always tell people: “I have a friend who writes the most beautiful letters” (1). In the play, as in life, it is Anita who introduces O’Keeffe’s work to Stieglitz who is, in turn, accurately described as: “Gallery owner. Two Nine One, Fifth Avenue. Leader of the New York avant-garde, the first to bring in the European moderns” (6). The play also chronicles how (unknown to O’Keeffe) Steiglitz exhibited the drawings Pollitzer gave him under the incorrect name, a scene which continues with Steiglitz persuading Georgia to allow her drawings to remain in his gallery (as he did in life) and ends with a reference to his famous photographs of her hands and nude form. Although the action of a substantial amount of real time is collapsed into a few dramatic minutes and, without doubt, the dialogue is invented, this invention achieves the level of aesthetic truth aimed for by many contemporary biographers (Jones)—as can be assessed when referring back to the accepted biographical account. What actually appears to have happened was that, in the autumn 1915, while teaching art in South Carolina, O’Keeffe was working on a series of abstract charcoal drawings that are now recognised as among the most innovative in American art of that time. She mailed some of these drawings to Pollitzer, who showed them Steiglitz, who exhibited ten of them in April 1916, O’Keeffe only learning of this through an acquaintance. O’Keeffe, who had first visited 291 in 1908 but never spoken to Stieglitz, held his critical opinion in high regard, and although confronting him over not seeking her permission and citing her name incorrectly, eventually agreed to let her drawings hang (Harris). Despite Shearer’s denial, the other characters in Georgia are also largely biographical sketches. Her “Anna Marie”, who never appears in the play but is spoken of, is Juan’s wife (in real life Anna Marie Hamilton), and “Dorothy Norman” is the character who has an affair with Steiglitz—the discovery of which leads to Georgia’s nervous breakdown in the play. In life, while O’Keeffe was in New Mexico, Stieglitz became involved with the much younger Norman who was, he claimed, only his gallery assistant. When O’Keeffe discovered Norman posing nude for her husband (this is vividly imagined in Georgia), O’Keeffe moved out of the Shelton and suffered from the depression that led to her nervous breakdown. “ Juan,” who ages from 26 to 39 in the play, represents the potter Juan Hamilton who encouraged the nearly blind O’Keeffe to paint again. In the biographical record there is much conjecture about Hamilton’s motives, and Shearer sensitively portrays her interpretation of this liaison and the difficult territory of sexual desire between a man and a much older woman, as she also too discloses the complex relationship between O’Keeffe and the much older Steiglitz.This complexity is described through the action of the play, but its disclosure is best appreciated if the biographical data is known. There are also a number of moments of biographical disclosure in the play that can only be fully understood with biographical knowledge in hand. For instance, Juan refers to Georgia’s paintings as “Beautiful, sexy flowers [... especially] the calla lilies” (24). All attending the play are aware (from the exhibition, program and technical aspects of the production) that, in life, O’Keeffe was famous for her flower paintings. However, knowing that these had brought her fame and fortune early in her career with, in 1928, a work titled Calla Lily selling for U.S. $25,000, then an enormous sum for any living American artist, adds to the meaning of this line in the play. Conversely, the significant level of biographical disclosure throughout Georgia does not diminish, in any way, the power or integrity of Shearer’s play as a literary work. Universal literary (and biographical) themes—love, desire and betrayal—animate Georgia; Steiglitz’s spirit haunts Georgia years after his death and much of the play’s dramatic energy is generated by her passion for both her dead husband and her younger lover, with some of her hopeless desire sublimated through her relationship with Juan. Nadia Wheatley reads such a relationship between invention and disclosure in terms of myth—relating how, in the process of writing her biography of Charmain Clift, she came to see Clift and her husband George Johnson take on a larger significance than their individual lives: “They were archetypes; ourselves writ large; experimenters who could test and try things for us; legendary figures through whom we could live vicariously” (5). In this, Wheatley finds that “while myth has no real beginning or end, it also does not bother itself with cause and effect. Nor does it worry about contradictions. Parallel tellings are vital to the fabric” (5). In contrast with both Rider and Shearer’s insistence that Georgia was “not biography”, it could be posited that (at least part of) Georgia’s power arises from the creation of such mythic value, and expressly through its nuanced disclosure of the relevant factual (biographical) elements in parallel to the development of its dramatic (invented) elements. Alongside this, accepting Georgia as such a form of biographical disclosure would mean that as well as a superbly inventive creative work, the highly original insights Shearer offers to the mass of O’Keeffe biography—something of an American industry—could be celebrated, rather than excused or denied. ReferencesArrowsmith, Alexandra, and Thomas West, eds. Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz: Two Lives—A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs. Washington DC: HarperCollins and Calloway Editions, and The Phillips Collection, 1992.Berry, Michael. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.Brien, Donna Lee. 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New York: WW Norton, 2004.Ellis, Carolyn. “Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research with Intimate Others.” Qualitative Inquiry 13.1 (2007): 3–29. Eisler, Benita. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Romance. New York: Doubleday, 1991.Eldredge, Charles C. Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1962.Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: N.A. Talese/Doubleday, 2003.Gibiore, Clive, ed. Lovingly, Georgia. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.Halligan, Marion. “Lapping.” In Peter Craven, ed. Best Australian Essays. Melbourne: Bookman P, 1999. 208–13.Halligan, Marion. The Fog Garden. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.Halligan, Marion. “The Cathedral of Love.” The Age 27 Nov. 1999: Saturday Extra 1.Harris, J. C. “Georgia O’Keeffe at 291”. Archives of General Psychiatry 64.2 (Feb. 2007): 135–37.Hogrefe, Jeffrey. O’Keeffe: The Life of an American Legend. New York: Bantam, 1994.Inglis, Ian. “Popular Music History on Screen: The Pop/Rock Biopic.” Popular Music History 2.1 (2007): 77–93.Jones, Kip. “A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic: The Use of Arts-Based (Re)presentations in “Performative” Dissemination of Life Stories”. Qualitative Sociology Review 2.1 (Apr. 2006): 66–85. Jones, Margaret B. Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.Lisle, Laurie. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Seaview Books, 1980.Murphy, Mary. “Limited Lives: The Problem of the Literary Biopic”. Kinema 17 (Spr. 2002): 67–74. Nelson, Camilla. “Faking It: History and Creative Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses 11.2 (Oct. 2007). 19 Oct. 2009 < http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct07/nelson.htm >.Nowra, Louis. Ice. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2008.Owen, Jillian A. Tullis, Chris McRae, Tony E. Adams, and Alisha Vitale. “Truth Troubles.” Qualitative Inquiry 15.1 (2008): 178–200.Patai, Daphne. “Ethical Problems of Personal Narratives, or, Who Should Eat the Last Piece of Cake.” International Journal of Oral History 8 (1987): 5–27.Peters, Sarah W. Becoming O’Keeffe. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991.Pollitzer, Anita. A Woman on Paper. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.Reily, Nancy Hopkins. Georgia O’Keeffe. A Private Friendship, Part II. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2009.Rider, Sue. “Director’s Note.” Georgia [playscript]. Sydney: Currency Press, 2000. vii–xii.Robinson, Roxana. Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990. Shearer, Jill. Georgia [playscript]. Sydney: Currency Press, 2000.Smith, Thomas R. “How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves [review]”. Biography 23.3 (2000): 534–38.Wheatley, Nadia. The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Sydney: Flamingo, 2001.Wolpert, Stanley. “Biography as History: A Personal Reflection”. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40.3 (2010): 399–412. Pub. online (Oct. 2009). 19 Oct. 2009 < http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/jinh/40/3 >.Wyatt, Jonathan. “Research, Narrative and Fiction: Conference Story”. The Qualitative Report 12.2 (Jun. 2007): 318–31.

As a scholarly discourse, transmedia storytelling relies heavily on conservative constructions of authorship that laud corporate architects and patriarchs such as George Lucas and J.J. Abrams as exemplars of “the creator.” This piece argues that transmedia theory works to construct patriarchal ideals of individual authorship to the detriment of alternative conceptions of transmediality, storyworlds, and authorship. The genesis for this piece was our struggle to find a transmedia storyworld that we were both familiar with, that also qualifies as “legitimate” transmedia in the eyes of our prospective scholarly readers. After trying to wrangle our various interests, fandoms, and areas of expertise into harmony, we realized we were exerting more effort in this process of validating stories as transmedia than actually examining how stories spread across various platforms, how they make meanings, and what kinds of pleasures they offer audiences. Authorship is a definitive criterion of transmedia storytelling theory; it is also an academic red herring. We were initially interested in investigating the possible overdeterminations between the healthcare industry and Breaking Bad (2008-2013). The series revolves around a high school chemistry teacher who launches a successful meth empire as a way to pay for his cancer treatments that a dysfunctional US healthcare industry refuses to fund. We wondered if the success of the series and the timely debates on healthcare raised in its reception prompted any PR response from or discussion among US health insurers. However, our concern was that this dynamic among medical and media industries would not qualify as transmedia because these exchanges were not authored by Vince Gilligan or any of the credited creators of Breaking Bad. Yet, why shouldn’t such interfaces between the “real world” and media fiction count as part of the transmedia story that is Breaking Bad? Most stories are, in some shape or form, transmedia stories at this stage, and transmedia theory acknowledges there is a long history to this kind of practice (Freeman). Let’s dispense with restrictive definitions of transmediality and turn attention to how storytelling behaves in a digital era, that is, the processes of creating, disseminating and amending stories across many different media, the meanings and forms such media and communications produce, and the pleasures they offer audiences.Can we think about how health insurance companies responded to Breaking Bad in terms of transmedia storytelling? Defining Transmedia Storytelling via AuthorshipThe scholarly concern with defining transmedia storytelling via a strong focus on authorship has traced slight distinctions between seriality, franchising, adaptation and transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling;” Johnson, “Media Franchising”). However, the theoretical discourse on authorship itself and these discussions of the tensions between forms are underwritten by a gendered bias. Indeed, the very concept of transmediality may be a gendered backlash against the rising prominence of seriality as a historically feminised mode of storytelling, associated with television and serial novels.Even with the move towards traditionally lowbrow, feminized forms of trans-serial narrative, the majority of academic and popular criticism of transmedia storytelling reproduces and reinstates narratives of male-centred, individual authorship that are historically descended from theorizations of the auteur. Auteur theory, which is still considered a legitimate analytical framework today, emerged in postwar theorizations of Hollywood film by French critics, most prominently in the journal Cahiers du Cinema, and at the nascence of film theory as a field (Cook). Auteur theory surfaced as a way to conceptualise aesthetic variation and value within the Fordist model of the Hollywood studio system (Cook). Directors were identified as the ultimate author or “creative source” if a film sufficiently fitted a paradigm of consistent “vision” across their oeuvre, and they were thus seen as artists challenging the commercialism of the studio system (Cook). In this way, classical auteur theory draws a dichotomy between art and authorship on one side and commerce and corporations on the other, strongly valorising the former for its existence within an industrial context dominated by the latter. In recent decades, auteurist notions have spread from film scholarship to pervade popular discourses of media authorship. Even though transmedia production inherently disrupts notions of authorship by diffusing the act of creation over many different media platforms and texts, much of the scholarship disproportionately chooses to vex over authorship in a manner reminiscent of classical auteur theory.In scholarly terms, a chief distinction between serial storytelling and transmedia storytelling lies in how authorship is constructed in relation to the text: serial storytelling has long been understood as relying on distributed authorship (Hilmes), but transmedia storytelling reveres the individual mastermind, or the master architect who plans and disseminates the storyworld across platforms. Henry Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling is multifaceted and includes, “the systematic dispersal of multiple textual elements across many channels, which reflects the synergies of media conglomeration, based on complex story-worlds, and coordinated authorial design of integrated elements” (Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling”). Jenkins is perhaps the most pivotal figure in developing transmedia studies in the humanities to date and a key reference point for most scholars working in this subfield.A key limitation of Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling is its emphasis on authorship, which persists in wider scholarship on transmedia storytelling. Jenkins focuses on the nature of authorship as a key characteristic of transmedia productions that distinguishes them from other kinds of intertextual and serial stories:Because transmedia storytelling requires a high degree of coordination across the different media sectors, it has so far worked best either in independent projects where the same artist shapes the story across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or co-creation) is encouraged across the different divisions of the same company. (Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling”)Since the texts under discussion are commonly large in their scale, budget, and the number of people employed, it is reductive to credit particular individuals for this work and implicitly dismiss the authorial contributions of many others. Elaborating on the foundation set by Jenkins, Matthew Freeman uses Foucauldian concepts to describe two “author-functions” focused on the role of an author in defining the transmedia text itself and in marketing it (Freeman 36-38). Scott, Evans, Hills, and Hadas similarly view authorial branding as a symbolic industrial strategy significant to transmedia storytelling. Interestingly, M.J. Clarke identifies the ways transmedia television texts invite audiences to imagine a central mastermind, but also thwart and defer this impulse. Ultimately, Freeman argues that identifiable and consistent authorship is a defining characteristic of transmedia storytelling (Freeman 37), and Suzanne Scott argues that transmedia storytelling has “intensified the author’s function” from previous eras (47).Industry definitions of transmediality similarly position authorship as central to transmedia storytelling, and Jenkins’ definition has also been widely mobilised in industry discussions (Jenkins, “Transmedia” 202). This is unsurprising, because defining authorial roles has significant monetary value in terms of remuneration and copyright. In speaking to the Producers Guild of America, Jeff Gomez enumerated eight defining characteristics of transmedia production, the very first of which is, “Content is originated by one or a very few visionaries” (PGA Blog). Gomez’s talk was part of an industry-driven bid to have “Transmedia Producer” recognised by the trade associations as a legitimate and significant role; Gomez was successful and is now recognised as a transmedia producer. Nevertheless, his talk of “visionaries” not only situates authorship as central to transmedia production, but constructs authorship in very conservative, almost hagiographical terms. Indeed, Leora Hadas analyses the function of Joss Whedon’s authorship of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (2013-) as a branding mechanism and argues that authors are becoming increasingly visible brands associated with transmedia stories.Such a discourse of authorship constructs individual figures as artists and masterminds, in an idealised manner that has been strongly critiqued in the wake of poststructuralism. It even recalls tired scholarly endeavours of divining authorial intention. Unsurprisingly, the figures valorised for their transmedia authorship are predominantly men; the scholarly emphasis on authorship thus reinforces the biases of media industries. Further, it idolises these figures at the expense of unacknowledged and under-celebrated female writers, directors and producers, as well as those creative workers labouring “below the line” in areas like production design, art direction, and special effects. Far from critiquing the biases of industry, academic discourse legitimises and lauds them.We hope that scholarship on transmedia storytelling might instead work to open up discourses of creation, production, authorship, and collaboration. For a story to qualify as transmedia is it even necessary to have an identifiable author? Transmedia texts and storyworlds can be genuinely collaborative or authorless creations, in which the harmony of various creators’ intentions may be unnecessary or even undesirable. Further, industry and academics alike often overlook examples of transmedia storytelling that might be considered “lowbrow.” For example, transmedia definitions should include Antonella the Uncensored Reviewer, a relatively small-scale, forty-something, plus size, YouTube channel producer whose persona is dispersed across multiple formats including beauty product reviews, letter writing, as well as interactive sex advice live casts. What happens when we blur the categories of author, celebrity, brand, and narrative in scholarship? We argue that these roles are substantially blurred in media industries in which authors like J.J. Abrams share the limelight with their stars as well as their corporate affiliations, and all “brands” are sutured to the storyworld text. These various actors all shape and are shaped by the narrative worlds they produce in an author-storyworld nexus, in which authorship includes all people working to produce the storyworld as well as the corporation funding it. Authorship never exists inside the limits of a single, male mind. Rather it is a field of relations among various players and stakeholders. While there is value in delineating between these roles for purposes of analysis and scholarly discussion, we should acknowledge that in the media industry, the roles of various stakeholders are increasingly porous.The current academic discourse of transmedia storytelling reconstructs old social biases and hierarchies in contexts where they might be most vulnerable to breakdown. Scott argues that,despite their potential to demystify and democratize authorship between producers and consumers, transmedia stories tend to reinforce boundaries between ‘official’ and ‘unauthorized’ forms of narrative expansion through the construction of a single author/textual authority figure. (44)Significantly, we suggest that it is the theorisation of transmedia storytelling that reinforces (or in fact constructs anew) an idealised author figure.The gendered dimension of the scholarly distinction between serialised (or trans-serial) and transmedial storytelling builds on a long history in the arts and the academy alike. In fact, an important precursor of transmedia narratives is the serialized novel of the Victorian era. The literature of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe was published in serial form and among the most widely read of the Victorian era in Western culture (Easley; Flint 21; Hilmes). Yet, these novels are rarely given proportional credit in what is popularly taught as the Western literary canon. The serial storytelling endemic to television as a medium has similarly been historically dismissed and marginalized as lowbrow and feminine (at least until the recent emergence of notions of the industrial role of the “showrunner” and the critical concept of “quality television”). Joanne Morreale outlines how trans-serial television examples, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, which spread their storyworlds across a number of different television programs, offer important precursors to today’s transmedia franchises (Morreale). In television’s nascent years, the anthology plays of the 1940s and 50s, which were discrete, unconnected hour-length stories, were heralded as cutting-edge, artistic and highbrow while serial narrative forms like the soap opera were denigrated (Boddy 80-92). Crucially, these anthology plays were largely created by and aimed at males, whereas soap operas were often created by and targeted to female audiences. The gendered terms in which various genres and modes of storytelling are discussed have implications for the value assigned to them in criticism, scholarship and culture more broadly (Hilmes; Kuhn; Johnson, “Devaluing”). Transmedia theory, as a scholarly discourse, betrays similarly gendered leanings as early television criticism, in valorising forms of transmedia narration that favour a single, male-bodied, and all-powerful author or corporation, such as George Lucas, Jim Henson or Marvel Comics.George Lucas is often depicted in scholarly and popular discourses as a headstrong transmedia auteur, as in the South Park episode ‘The China Problem’ (2008)A Circle of Men: Fans, Creators, Stories and TheoristsInterestingly, scholarly discourse on transmedia even betrays these gendered biases when exploring the engagement and activity of audiences in relation to transmedia texts. Despite the definitional emphasis on authorship, fan cultures have been a substantial topic of investigation in scholarly studies of transmedia storytelling, with many scholars elevating fans to the status of author, exploring the apparent blurring of these boundaries, and recasting the terms of these relationships (Scott; Dena; Pearson; Stein). Most notably, substantial scholarly attention has traced how transmedia texts cultivate a masculinized, “nerdy” fan culture that identifies with the male-bodied, all-powerful author or corporation (Brooker, Star Wars, Using; Jenkins, Convergence). Whether idealising the role of the creators or audiences, transmedia theory reinforces gendered hierarchies. Star Wars (1977-) is a pivotal corporate transmedia franchise that significantly shaped the convergent trajectory of media industries in the 20th century. As such it is also an anchor point for transmedia scholarship, much of which lauds and legitimates the creative work of fans. However, in focusing so heavily on the macho power struggle between George Lucas and Star Wars fans for authorial control over the storyworld, scholarship unwittingly reinstates Lucas’s status as sole creator rather than treating Star Wars’ authorship as inherently diffuse and porous.Recent fan activity surrounding animated adult science-fiction sitcom Rick and Morty (2013-) further demonstrates the macho culture of transmedia fandom in practice and its fascination with male authors. The animated series follows the intergalactic misadventures of a scientific genius and his grandson. Inspired by a seemingly inconsequential joke on the show, some of its fans began to fetishize a particular, limited-edition fast food sauce. When McDonalds, the actual owner of that sauce, cashed in by promoting the return of its Szechuan Sauce, a macho culture within the show’s fandom reached its zenith in the forms of hostile behaviour at McDonalds restaurants and online (Alexander and Kuchera). Rick and Morty fandom also built a misogynist reputation for its angry responses to the show’s efforts to hire a writer’s room that gave equal representation to women. Rick and Morty trolls doggedly harassed a few of the show’s female writers through 2017 and went so far as to post their private information online (Barsanti). Such gender politics of fan cultures have been the subject of much scholarly attention (Johnson, “Fan-tagonism”), not least in the many conversations hosted on Jenkins’ blog. Gendered performances and readings of fan activity are instrumental in defining and legitimating some texts as transmedia and some creators as masterminds, not only within fandoms but also in the scholarly discourse.When McDonalds promoted the return of their Szechuan Sauce, in response to its mention in the story world of animated sci-fi sitcom Rick and Morty, they contributed to transmedia storytelling.Both Rick and Morty and Star Wars are examples of how masculinist fan cultures, stubborn allegiances to male authorship, and definitions of transmedia converge both in academia and popular culture. While Rick and Morty is, in reality, partly female-authored, much of its media image is still anchored to its two male “creators,” Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon. Particularly in the context of #MeToo feminism, one wonders how much female authorship has been elided from existing storyworlds and, furthermore, what alternative examples of transmedia narration are exempt from current definitions of transmediality.The individual creator is a social construction of scholarship and popular discourse. This imaginary creator bears little relation to the conditions of creation and production of transmedia storyworlds, which are almost always team written and collectively authored. Further, the focus on writing itself elides the significant contributions of many creators such as those in production design (Bevan). Beyond that, what creative credit do focus groups deserve in shaping transmedia stories and their multi-layered, multi-platformed reaches? Is authorship, or even credit, really the concept we, as scholars, want to invest in when studying these forms of narration and mediation?At more symbolic levels, the seemingly exhaustless popular and scholarly appetite for male-bodied authorship persists within storyworlds themselves. The transmedia examples popularly and academically heralded as “seminal” centre on patrimony, patrilineage, and inheritance (i.e. Star Wars [1977-] and The Lord of the Rings [1937-]). Of course, Harry Potter (2001-2009) is an outlier as the celebrification of J.K. Rowling provides a strong example of credited female authorship. However, this example plays out many of the same issues, albeit the franchise is attached to a woman, in that it precludes many of the other creative minds who have helped shape Harry Potter’s world. How many more billions of dollars need we invest in men writing about the mysteries of how other men spread their genetic material across fictional universes? Moreover, transmedia studies remains dominated by academic men geeking out about how fan men geek out about how male creators write about mostly male characters in stories about … men. There are other stories waiting to be told and studied through the practices and theories of transmedia. These stories might be gender-inclusive and collective in ways that challenge traditional notions of authorship, control, rights, origin, and property.Obsession with male authorship, control, rights, origin, paternity and property is recognisible in scholarship on transmedia storytelling, and also symbolically in many of the most heralded examples of transmedia storytelling, such as the Star Wars saga.Prompting Broader DiscussionThis piece urges the development of broader understandings of transmedia storytelling. A range of media scholarship has already begun this work. Jonathan Gray’s book on paratexts offers an important pathway for such scholarship by legitimating ancillary texts, like posters and trailers, that uniquely straddle promotional and feature content platforms (Gray). A wave of scholars productively explores transmedia storytelling with a focus on storyworlds (Scolari; Harvey), often through the lens of narratology (Ryan; Ryan and Thon). Scolari, Bertetti, and Freeman have drawn together a media archaeological approach and a focus on transmedia characters in an innovative way. We hope to see greater proliferation of focuses and perspectives for the study of transmedia storytelling, including investigations that connect fictional and non-fictional worlds and stories, and a more inclusive variety of life experiences.Conversely, new scholarship on media authorship provides fresh directions, models, methods, and concepts for examining the complexity and messiness of this topic. A growing body of scholarship on the functions of media branding is also productive for reconceptualising notions of authorship in transmedia storytelling (Bourdaa; Dehry Kurtz and Bourdaa). Most notably, A Companion to Media Authorship edited by Gray and Derek Johnson productively interrogates relationships between creative processes, collaborative practices, production cultures, industrial structures, legal frameworks, and theoretical approaches around media authorship. Its case studies begin the work of reimagining of the role of authorship in transmedia, and pave the way for further developments (Burnett; Gordon; Hilmes; Stein). In particular, Matt Hills’s case study of how “counter-authorship” was negotiated on Torchwood (2006-2011) opens up new ways of thinking about multiple authorship and the variety of experiences, contributions, credits, and relationships this encompasses. Johnson’s Media Franchising addresses authorship in a complex way through a focus on social interactions, without making it a defining feature of the form; it would be significant to see a similar scholarly treatment of transmedia. At the very least, scholarly attention might turn its focus away from the very patriarchal activity of discussing definitions among a coterie and, instead, study the process of spreadability of male-centred transmedia storyworlds (Jenkins, Ford, and Green). Given that transmedia is not historically unique to the digital age, scholars might instead study how spreadability changes with the emergence of digitality and convergence, rather than pontificating on definitions of adaptation versus transmedia and cinema versus media.We urge transmedia scholars to distance their work from the malignant gender politics endemic to the media industries and particularly global Hollywood. The confluence of gendered agendas in both academia and media industries works to reinforce patriarchal hierarchies. The humanities should offer independent analysis and critique of how media industries and products function, and should highlight opportunities for conceiving of, creating, and treating such media practices and texts in new ways. As such, it is problematic that discourses on transmedia commonly neglect the distinction between what defines transmediality and what constitutes good examples of transmedia. This blurs the boundaries between description and prescription, taxonomy and hierarchy, analysis and evaluation, and definition and taste. Such discourses blinker us to what we might consider to be transmedia, but also to what examples of “good” transmedia storytelling might look like.Transmedia theory focuses disproportionately on authorship. This restricts a comprehensive understanding of transmedia storytelling, limits the lenses we bring to it, obstructs the ways we evaluate transmedia stories, and impedes how we imagine the possibilities for both media and storytelling. Stories have always been transmedial. What changes with the inception of transmedia theory is that men can claim credit for the stories and for all the work that many people do across various sectors and industries. It is questionable whether authorship is important to transmedia, in which creation is most often collective, loosely planned (at best) and diffused across many people, skill sets, and sectors. While Jenkins’s work has been pivotal in the development of transmedia theory, this is a ripe moment for the diversification of theoretical paradigms for understanding stories in the digital era.ReferencesAlexander, Julia, and Ben Kuchera. “How a Rick and Morty Joke Led to a McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce Controversy.” Polygon 4 Apr. 2017. <https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/12/16464374/rick-and-morty-mcdonalds-szechuan-sauce>.Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961. Barsanti, Sami. “Dan Harmon Is Pissed at Rick and Morty Fans Harassing Female Writers.” The AV Club 21 Sep. 2017. <https://www.avclub.com/dan-harmon-is-pissed-at-rick-and-morty-fans-for-harassi-1818628816>.Bevan, Alex. “Nostalgia for Pre-Digital Media in Mad Men.” Television & New Media 14.6 (2013): 546-559.Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1993.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “This Is Not Marketing. This Is HBO: Branding HBO with Transmedia Storytelling.” Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 7.1 (2014). <http://www.ojs.meccsa.org.uk/index.php/netknow/article/view/328>.Brooker, Will. Star Wars. London: BFI Classics, 2009. ———. Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans. New York: Bloomsbury, 2003.Burnett, Colin. “Hidden Hands at Work: Authorship, the Intentional Flux and the Dynamics of Collaboration.” In A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson, 112-133. Oxford: Wiley, 2013.Clark, M.J. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.Cook, Pam. “Authorship and Cinema.” In The Cinema Book, 2nd ed., ed. Pam Cook, 235-314. London: BFI, 1999.Dena, Christy. Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments. PhD Thesis, University of Sydney. 2009.Dehry Kurtz, B.W.L., and Mélanie Bourdaa (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016.Evans, Elizabeth. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011.Easley, Alexis. First Person Anonymous. New York: Routledge, 2016.Flint, Kate. “The Victorian Novel and Its Readers.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. Deirdre David, 13-35. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. Freeman, Matthew. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth Century Storyworlds. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016.Gordon, Ian. “Comics, Creators and Copyright: On the Ownership of Serial Narratives by Multiple Authors.” In A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson, 221-236. Oxford: Wiley, 2013.Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Texts. New York: New York UP, 2010.Gray, Jonathan, and Derek Johnson (eds.). A Companion to Media Authorship. Chichester: Wiley, 2013.Hadas, Leora. “Authorship and Authenticity in the Transmedia Brand: The Case of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, 7.1 (2014). <http://www.ojs.meccsa.org.uk/index.php/netknow/article/view/332>.Harvey, Colin. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory across Fantasy Storyworlds. London: Palgrave, 2015.Hills, Matt. “From Chris Chibnall to Fox: Torchwood’s Marginalised Authors and Counter-Discourses of TV Authorship.” In A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson, 200-220. Oxford: Wiley, 2013.Hilmes, Michelle. “Never Ending Story: Authorship, Seriality and the Radio Writers Guild.” In A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson, 181-199. Oxford: Wiley, 2013.Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia 202: Further Reflections.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 31 July 2011. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html>.———. “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 21 Mar. 2007. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html>.———. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.———, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York UP, 2013.Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York UP, 2013.———. “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom.” In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 285-300. New York: New York UP, 2007.———. “Devaluing and Revaluing Seriality: The Gendered Discourses of Media Franchising.” Media, Culture & Society, 33.7 (2011): 1077-1093. Kuhn, Annette. “Women’s Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera and Theory.” In Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, eds. Charlotte Brunsdon and Lynn Spigel, 225-234. 2nd ed. Maidenhead: Open UP, 2008.Morreale, Joanne. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 2015.Pearson, Roberta. “Fandom in the Digital Era.” Popular Communication, 8.1 (2010): 84-95. DOI: 10.1080/15405700903502346.Producers Guild of America, The. “Defining Characteristics of Trans-Media Production.” PGA NMC Blog. 2 Oct. 2007. <http://pganmc.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/pga-member-jeff-gomez-left-assembled.html>.Rodham Clinton, Hillary. What Happened. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Transmedial Storytelling and Transficitonality.” Poetics Today, 34.3 (2013): 361-388. DOI: 10.1215/03335372-2325250. ———, and Jan-Noȅl Thon (eds.). Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2014.Scolari, Carlos A. “Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production.” International Journal of Communication, 3 (2009): 586-606.———, Paolo Bertetti, and Matthew Freeman. Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2014.Scott, Suzanne. “Who’s Steering the Mothership?: The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling.” In The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, 43-52. London: Routledge, 2013.Stein, Louisa Ellen. “#Bowdown to Your New God: Misha Collins and Decentered Authorship in the Digital Age.” In A Companion to Media Authorship, ed. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson, 403-425. Oxford: Wiley, 2013.

In the last months of his life, 86-year-old Albert Facey became a best-selling author and revered cultural figure following the publication of his autobiography, A Fortunate Life. Released on Anzac Day 1981, it was praised for its “plain, unembellished, utterly sincere and un-self-pitying account of the privations of childhood and youth” (Semmler) and “extremely powerful description of Gallipoli” (Dutton 16). Within weeks, critic Nancy Keesing declared it an “Enduring Classic.” Within six months, it was announced as the winner of two prestigious non-fiction awards, with judges acknowledging Facey’s “extraordinary memory” and “ability to describe scenes and characters with great precision” (“NBC” 4). A Fortunate Life also transformed the fortunes of its publisher. Founded in 1976 as an independent, not-for-profit publishing house, Fremantle Arts Centre Press (FACP) might have been expected, given the Australian average, to survive for just a few years. Former managing editor Ray Coffey attributes the Press’s ongoing viability, in no small measure, to Facey’s success (King 29). Along with Wendy Jenkins, Coffey edited Facey’s manuscript through to publication; only five months after its release, with demand outstripping the capabilities, FACP licensed Penguin to take over the book’s production and distribution. Adaptations soon followed. In 1984, Kerry Packer’s PBL launched a prospectus for a mini-series, which raised a record $6.3 million (PBL 7–8). Aired in 1986 with a high-rating documentary called The Facey Phenomenon, the series became the most watched television event of the year (Lucas). Syndication of chapters to national and regional newspapers, stage and radio productions, audio- and e-books, abridged editions for young readers, and inclusion on secondary school curricula extended the range and influence of Facey’s life writing. Recently, an option was taken out for a new television series (Fraser).A hundred reprints and two million readers on from initial publication, A Fortunate Life continues to rate among the most appreciated Australian books of all time. Commenting on a reader survey in 2012, writer and critic Marieke Hardy enthused, “I really loved it [. . .] I felt like I was seeing a part of my country and my country’s history through a very human voice . . .” (First Tuesday Book Club). Registering a transformed reading, Hardy’s reference to Australian “history” is unproblematically juxtaposed with amused delight in an autobiography that invents and embellishes: not believing “half” of what Facey wrote, she insists he was foremost a yarn spinner. While the work’s status as a witness account has become less authoritative over time, it seems appreciation of the author’s imagination and literary skill has increased (Williamson). A Fortunate Life has been read more commonly as an uncomplicated, first-hand account, such that editor Wendy Jenkins felt it necessary to refute as an “utter mirage” that memoir is “transferred to the page by an act of perfect dictation.” Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson argue of life narratives that some “autobiographical claims [. . .] can be verified or discounted by recourse to documentation outside the text. But autobiographical truth is a different matter” (16). With increased access to archives, especially digitised personnel records, historians have asserted that key elements of Facey’s autobiography are incorrect or “fabricated” (Roberts), including his enlistment in 1914 and participation in the Gallipoli Landing on 25 April 1915. We have researched various sources relevant to Facey’s early years and war service, including hard-copy medical and repatriation records released in 2012, and find A Fortunate Life in a range of ways deviates from “documentation outside of the text,” revealing intriguing, layered storytelling. We agree with Smith and Watson that “autobiographical acts” are “anything but simple or transparent” (63). As “symbolic interactions in the world,” they are “culturally and historically specific” and “engaged in an argument about identity” (63). Inevitably, they are also “fractured by the play of meaning” (63). Our approach, therefore, includes textual analysis of Facey’s drafts alongside the published narrative and his medical records. We do not privilege institutional records as impartial but rather interpret them in terms of their hierarchies and organisation of knowledge. This leads us to speculate on alternative readings of A Fortunate Life as an illness narrative that variously resists and subscribes to dominant cultural plots, tropes, and attitudes. Facey set about writing in earnest in the 1970s and generated (at least) three handwritten drafts, along with a typescript based on the third draft. FACP produced its own working copy from the typescript. Our comparison of the drafts offers insights into the production of Facey’s final text and the otherwise “hidden” roles of editors as transformers and enablers (Munro 1). The notion that a working man with basic literacy could produce a highly readable book in part explains Facey’s enduring appeal. His grandson and literary executor, John Rose, observed in early interviews that Facey was a “natural storyteller” who had related details of his life at every opportunity over a period of more than six decades (McLeod). Jenkins points out that Facey belonged to a vivid oral culture within which he “told and retold stories to himself and others,” so that they eventually “rubbed down into the lines and shapes that would so memorably underpin the extended memoir that became A Fortunate Life.” A mystique was thereby established that “time” was Albert Facey’s “first editor” (Jenkins). The publisher expressly aimed to retain Facey’s voice, content, and meaning, though editing included much correcting of grammar and punctuation, eradication of internal inconsistencies and anomalies, and structural reorganisation into six sections and 68 chapters. We find across Facey’s drafts a broadly similar chronology detailing childhood abandonment, life-threatening incidents, youthful resourcefulness, physical prowess, and participation in the Gallipoli Landing. However, there are also shifts and changed details, including varying descriptions of childhood abuse at a place called Cave Rock; the introduction of (incompatible accounts of) interstate boxing tours in drafts two and three which replace shearing activities in Draft One; divergent tales of Facey as a world-standard athlete, league footballer, expert marksman, and powerful swimmer; and changing stories of enlistment and war service (see Murphy and Nile, “Wounded”; “Naked”).Jenkins edited those sections concerned with childhood and youth, while Coffey attended to Facey’s war and post-war life. Drawing on C.E.W. Bean’s official war history, Coffey introduced specificity to the draft’s otherwise vague descriptions of battle and amended errors, such as Facey’s claim to have witnessed Lord Kitchener on the beach at Gallipoli. Importantly, Coffey suggested the now famous title, “A Fortunate Life,” and encouraged the author to alter the ending. When asked to suggest a title, Facey offered “Cave Rock” (Interview)—the site of his violent abuse and humiliation as a boy. Draft One concluded with Facey’s repatriation from the war and marriage in 1916 (106); Draft Two with a brief account of continuing post-war illness and ultimate defeat: “My war injuries caught up with me again” (107). The submitted typescript concludes: “I have often thought that going to War has caused my life to be wasted” (Typescript 206). This ending differs dramatically from the redemptive vision of the published narrative: “I have lived a very good life, it has been very rich and full. I have been very fortunate and I am thrilled by it when I look back” (412).In The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank argues that literary markets exist for stories of “narrative wreckage” (196) that are redeemed by reconciliation, resistance, recovery, or rehabilitation, which is precisely the shape of Facey’s published life story and a source of its popularity. Musing on his post-war experiences in A Fortunate Life, Facey focuses on his ability to transform the material world around him: “I liked the challenge of building up a place from nothing and making a success where another fellow had failed” (409). If Facey’s challenge was building up something from nothing, something he could set to work on and improve, his life-writing might reasonably be regarded as a part of this broader project and desire for transformation, so that editorial interventions helped him realise this purpose. Facey’s narrative was produced within a specific zeitgeist, which historian Joy Damousi notes was signalled by publication in 1974 of Bill Gammage’s influential, multiply-reprinted study of front-line soldiers, The Broken Years, which drew on the letters and diaries of a thousand Great War veterans, and also the release in 1981 of Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli, for which Gammage was the historical advisor. The story of Australia’s war now conceptualised fallen soldiers as “innocent victims” (Damousi 101), while survivors were left to “compose” memories consistent with their sacrifice (Thomson 237–54). Viewing Facey’s drafts reminds us that life narratives are works of imagination, that the past is not fixed and memory is created in the present. Facey’s autobiographical efforts and those of his publisher to improve the work’s intelligibility and relevance together constitute an attempt to “objectify the self—to present it as a knowable object—through a narrative that re-structures [. . .] the self as history and conclusions” (Foster 10). Yet, such histories almost invariably leave “a crucial gap” or “censored chapter.” Dennis Foster argues that conceiving of narration as confession, rather than expression, “allows us to see the pathos of the simultaneous pursuit and evasion of meaning” (10); we believe a significant lacuna in Facey’s life writing is intimated by its various transformations.In a defining episode, A Fortunate Life proposes that Facey was taken from Gallipoli on 19 August 1915 due to wounding that day from a shell blast that caused sandbags to fall on him, crush his leg, and hurt him “badly inside,” and a bullet to the shoulder (348). The typescript, however, includes an additional but narratively irreconcilable date of 28 June for the same wounding. The later date, 19 August, was settled on for publication despite the author’s compelling claim for the earlier one: “I had been blown up by a shell and some 7 or 8 sandbags had fallen on top of me, the day was the 28th of June 1915, how I remembered this date, it was the day my brother Roy had been killed by a shell burst.” He adds: “I was very ill for about six weeks after the incident but never reported it to our Battalion doctor because I was afraid he would send me away” (Typescript 205). This account accords with Facey’s first draft and his medical records but is inconsistent with other parts of the typescript that depict an uninjured Facey taking a leading role in fierce fighting throughout July and August. It appears, furthermore, that Facey was not badly wounded at any time. His war service record indicates that he was removed from Gallipoli due to “heart troubles” (Repatriation), which he also claims in his first draft. Facey’s editors did not have ready access to military files in Canberra, while medical files were not released until 2012. There existed, therefore, virtually no opportunity to corroborate the author’s version of events, while the official war history and the records of the State Library of Western Australia, which were consulted, contain no reference to Facey or his war service (Interview). As a consequence, the editors were almost entirely dependent on narrative logic and clarifications by an author whose eyesight and memory had deteriorated to such an extent he was unable to read his amended text. A Fortunate Life depicts men with “nerve sickness” who were not permitted to “stay at the Front because they would be upsetting to the others, especially those who were inclined that way themselves” (350). By cross referencing the draft manuscripts against medical records, we can now perceive that Facey was regarded as one of those nerve cases. According to Facey’s published account, his wounds “baffled” doctors in Egypt and Fremantle (353). His medical records reveal that in September 1915, while hospitalised in Egypt, his “palpitations” were diagnosed as “Tachycardia” triggered by war-induced neuroses that began on 28 June. This suggests that Facey endured seven weeks in the field in this condition, with the implication being that his debility worsened, resulting in his hospitalisation. A diagnosis of “debility,” “nerves,” and “strain” placed Facey in a medical category of “Special Invalids” (Butler 541). Major A.W. Campbell noted in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1916 that the war was creating “many cases of little understood nervous and mental affections, not only where a definite wound has been received, but in many cases where nothing of the sort appears” (323). Enlisted doctors were either physicians or surgeons and sometimes both. None had any experience of trauma on the scale of the First World War. In 1915, Campbell was one of only two Australian doctors with any pre-war experience of “mental diseases” (Lindstrom 30). On staff at the Australian Base Hospital at Heliopolis throughout the Gallipoli campaign, he claimed that at times nerve cases “almost monopolised” the wards under his charge (319). Bearing out Facey’s description, Campbell also reported that affected men “received no sympathy” and, as “carriers of psychic contagion,” were treated as a “source of danger” to themselves and others (323). Credentialed by royal colleges in London and coming under British command, Australian medical teams followed the practice of classifying men presenting “nervous or mental symptoms” as “battle casualties” only if they had also been wounded by “enemy action” (Loughran 106). By contrast, functional disability, with no accompanying physical wounds, was treated as unmanly and a “hysterical” reaction to the pressures of war. Mental debility was something to be feared in the trenches and diagnosis almost invariably invoked charges of predisposition or malingering (Tyquin 148–49). This shifted responsibility (and blame) from the war to the individual. Even as late as the 1950s, medical notes referred to Facey’s condition as being “constitutional” (Repatriation).Facey’s narrative demonstrates awareness of how harshly sufferers were treated. We believe that he defended himself against this with stories of physical injury that his doctors never fully accepted and that he may have experienced conversion disorder, where irreconcilable experience finds somatic expression. His medical diagnosis in 1915 and later life writing establish a causal link with the explosion and his partial burial on 28 June, consistent with opinion at the time that linked concussive blasts with destabilisation of the nervous system (Eager 422). Facey was also badly shaken by exposure to the violence and abjection of war, including hand-to-hand combat and retrieving for burial shattered and often decomposed bodies, and, in particular, by the death of his brother Roy, whose body was blown to pieces on 28 June. (A second brother, Joseph, was killed by multiple bayonet wounds while Facey was convalescing in Egypt.) Such experiences cast a different light on Facey’s observation of men suffering nerves on board the hospital ship: “I have seen men doze off into a light sleep and suddenly jump up shouting, ‘Here they come! Quick! Thousands of them. We’re doomed!’” (350). Facey had escaped the danger of death by explosion or bayonet but at a cost, and the war haunted him for the rest of his days. On disembarkation at Fremantle on 20 November 1915, he was admitted to hospital where he remained on and off for several months. Forty-one other sick and wounded disembarked with him (HMAT). Around one third, experiencing nerve-related illness, had been sent home for rest; while none returned to the war, some of the physically wounded did (War Service Records). During this time, Facey continued to present with “frequent attacks of palpitation and giddiness,” was often “short winded,” and had “heart trouble” (Repatriation). He was discharged from the army in June 1916 but, his drafts suggest, his war never really ended. He began a new life as a wounded Anzac. His dependent and often fractious relationship with the Repatriation Department ended only with his death 66 years later. Historian Marina Larsson persuasively argues that repatriated sick and wounded servicemen from the First World War represented a displaced presence at home. Many led liminal lives of “disenfranchised grief” (80). Stephen Garton observes a distinctive Australian use of repatriation to describe “all policies involved in returning, discharging, pensioning, assisting and training returned men and women, and continuing to assist them throughout their lives” (74). Its primary definition invokes coming home but to repatriate also implies banishment from a place that is not home, so that Facey was in this sense expelled from Gallipoli and, by extension, excluded from the myth of Anzac. Unlike his two brothers, he would not join history as one of the glorious dead; his name would appear on no roll of honour. Return home is not equivalent to restoration of his prior state and identity, for baggage from the other place perpetually weighs. Furthermore, failure to regain health and independence strains hospitality and gratitude for the soldier’s service to King and country. This might be exacerbated where there is no evident or visible injury, creating suspicion of resistance, cowardice, or malingering. Over 26 assessments between 1916 and 1958, when Facey was granted a full war pension, the Repatriation Department observed him as a “neuropathic personality” exhibiting “paroxysmal tachycardia” and “neurocirculatory asthenia.” In 1954, doctors wrote, “We consider the condition is a real handicap and hindrance to his getting employment.” They noted that after “attacks,” Facey had a “busted depressed feeling,” but continued to find “no underlying myocardial disease” (Repatriation) and no validity in Facey’s claims that he had been seriously physically wounded in the war (though A Fortunate Life suggests a happier outcome, where an independent medical panel finally locates the cause of his ongoing illness—rupture of his spleen in the war—which results in an increased war pension). Facey’s condition was, at times, a source of frustration for the doctors and, we suspect, disappointment and shame to him, though this appeared to reduce on both sides when the Repatriation Department began easing proof of disability from the 1950s (Thomson 287), and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs was created in 1976. This had the effect of shifting public and media scrutiny back onto a system that had until then deprived some “innocent victims of the compensation that was their due” (Garton 249). Such changes anticipated the introduction of Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980. Revisions to the DSM established a “genealogy of trauma” and “panic disorders” (100, 33), so that diagnoses such as “neuropathic personality” (Echterling, Field, and Stewart 192) and “soldier’s heart,” that is, disorders considered “neurotic,” were “retrospectively reinterpreted” as a form of PTSD. However, Alberti points out that, despite such developments, war-related trauma continues to be contested (80). We propose that Albert Facey spent his adult life troubled by a sense of regret and failure because of his removal from Gallipoli and that he attempted to compensate through storytelling, which included his being an original Anzac and seriously wounded in action. By writing, Facey could shore up his rectitude, work ethic, and sense of loyalty to other servicemen, which became necessary, we believe, because repatriation doctors (and probably others) had doubted him. In 1927 and again in 1933, an examining doctor concluded: “The existence of a disability depends entirely on his own unsupported statements” (Repatriation). We argue that Facey’s Gallipoli experiences transformed his life. By his own account, he enlisted for war as a physically robust and supremely athletic young man and returned nine months later to life-long anxiety and ill-health. Publication transformed him into a national sage, earning him, in his final months, the credibility, empathy, and affirmation he had long sought. Exploring different accounts of Facey, in the shape of his drafts and institutional records, gives rise to new interpretations. In this context, we believe it is time for a new edition of A Fortunate Life that recognises it as a complex testimonial narrative and theorises Facey’s deployment of national legends and motifs in relation to his “wounded storytelling” as well as to shifting cultural and medical conceptualisations and treatments of shame and trauma. ReferencesAlberti, Fay Bound. Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Butler, A.G. Official History of the Australian Medical Services 1814-1918: Vol I Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1930.Campbell, A.W. “Remarks on Some Neuroses and Psychoses in War.” Medical Journal of Australia 15 April (1916): 319–23.Damousi, Joy. “Why Do We Get So Emotional about Anzac.” What’s Wrong with Anzac. Ed. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds. Sydney: UNSWP, 2015. 94–109.Dutton, Geoffrey. “Fremantle Arts Centre Press Publicity.” Australian Book Review May (1981): 16.Eager, R. “War Neuroses Occurring in Cases with a Definitive History of Shell Shock.” British Medical Journal 13 Apr. 1918): 422–25.Echterling, L.G., Thomas A. Field, and Anne L. Stewart. “Evolution of PTSD in the DSM.” Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Ed. Marilyn P. Safir and Helene S. Wallach. New York: Springer, 2015. 189–212.Facey, A.B. A Fortunate Life. 1981. Ringwood: Penguin, 2005.———. Drafts 1–3. University of Western Australia, Special Collections.———. Transcript. 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