THE NEAR-DEATH OF THE AUTHOR Creativity in the Internet Age In the modern world of networked digital media, authors must navigate many challenges. Most pressingly, the illegal downloading and stream- ing of copyright material on the internet deprives authors of royalties, and in some cases it has discouraged creativity or terminated careers. Exploring technology’s impact on the status and idea of authorship in today’s world, The Near-Death of the Author reveals the many obstacles facing contemporary authors. John Potts details how the online culture of remix and creative reuse operates in a post-authorship mode, with little regard for individual authorship. The book explores how developments in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) have yielded novels, newspaper articles, musical works, films, and paintings without the need of human authors or artists. It also examines how these AI achievements have provoked questions regarding the authorship of new works, such as Does the author need to be human? And, more alarmingly, Is there even a need for human authors? Providing suggestions on how contemporary authors can endure in the world of data, the book ultimately concludes that network culture has provoked the near-death, but not the death, of the author. JOHN POTTS is a professor of media and the director of the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University. This page intentionally left blank The Near-Death of the Author Creativity in the Internet Age JOHN POTTS UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2023 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-4134-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-4136-1 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-4612-0 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4875-4135-4 (PDF) Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The near-death of the author : creativity in the internet age / John Potts. Names: Potts, John, 1959–, author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220225508 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220225567 | ISBN 9781487541347 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487546120 (paper) | ISBN 9781487541361 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487541354 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Authorship – History. | LCSH: Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) | LCSH: Disruptive technologies. | LCSH: Internet. Classification: LCC PN145 .P68 2023 | DDC 808.02/09 – dc23 We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Australian Research Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 “Heroes with Names”: What Is the Author? 8 2 “I Don’t Own It”: Contemporary Complications 23 3 Who Is the Author / Who Are the Authors? 42 4 A Brief History of the Author 63 5 The Alleged Death of the Author: Post-structuralism and Postmodernism 93 6 The Author and Technology: Downloading vs. Copyright 108 7 Big Data Writing: Author as Algorithm 135 8 AI vs. the Author 146 9 “Creative Reuse”: Post-authorship in Internet Culture 160 Epilogue: The Near-Death, Not the Death, of the Author 172 Notes 175 Bibliography 193 Index 205 This page intentionally left blank Figures 2.1 Joseph Quilter aka WEI2, graff ti art 33 2.2 Justine Varga, Maternal Line, 2017, chromogenic photograph, 160.0 x 125.0 cm (frame) 40 3.1 Karen Pearlman, I Want to Make a Film about Women (2019), still 54 3.2 Wikipedia homepage 57 3.3 The Noon Quilt , edited by Teri Hoskin and Sue Thomas 61 4.1 Cuneiform script, clay tablet, from Northern Mesopotamia Media-Assyria Kingdom, second half of the second millennium BCE 69 4.2 William Shakespeare, Hamlet in First Folio , 1623 82 4.3 Illustration from the frontispiece of the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 89 6.1 Download progress bar 109 7.1 B en Rubin and Mark Hansen, Moveable Type , 2007 137 7.2 Chris Rodley and Andrew Burrell, Death of an Alchemist, 2015 141 7.3 Chris Rodley and Andrew Burrell, Death of an Alchemist (detail) 142 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I wish to thank Mark Thompson at Toronto University Press for his support of this book project. I am grateful to colleagues at Macqua- rie University for their specialist advice on pertinent topics: Steve Col- lins on copyright and copyright minimalism; Karen Pearlman on film authorship; Rita Matulionyte on AI and creativity; Jan Zwar on authors and digital disruption; Stefan Solomon on NFTs; and Joseph Quilter on graffiti art and copyright law. I also thank Gordon McMullan at King’s College London for his expert advice on Shakespeare and authorship. I am also grateful for the artists who have granted permission to reproduce their works in this book: Justine Varga, Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, Sue Thomas, Chris Rodley and Andrew Burrell, Joseph Quil- ter, Karen Pearlman. Part of the research for this book was conducted for an Austra- lian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant on digitizing the archive. I acknowledge the support of the ARC in the form of this grant. I also acknowledge the support for my research provided by the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University. Special thanks for inspiration: Sophie and Leo.