ABSTRACT
Dealing with a complex discipline like copyright requires attention to the conceptual aura surrounding it. Copyright scholars develop new concepts, reject existing ones and introduce into the copyright playing field conflicting views and attitudes. We like, as Waldron asserts ‘to keep our armory of concepts in good shape’1 in order to defend our personal understanding and claim that those of others lack clarity. In this chapter I examine the nature of copyright as a ‘concept’ and discuss the benefits that can be derived from understanding copyright as a vague conceptual framework, or, alternatively as an arsenal of competing interpretations and permutations, rendering its meaning ‘essentially contested.’ In this book I offer a new definitional paradigm for copyright. As Garon observes, ‘[u]nless there is a valid conceptual basis for copyright laws, there can be no fundamental immorality in refusing to be bound by them…’2
‘Concept’ versus ‘Conception’
Philosophers sometimes distinguish between ‘concepts’ and ‘conceptions’ as analytical tools.3 The distinction concerns levels of abstraction. The concept of X is more general, more abstract and does not tell us what X requires in particular circumstances. The concept displays an inherent complexity. Hart, for example, argues that there is ‘certain complexity in the structure of the idea of justice.’4 Justice is an abstract idea which to many would mean maintaining or restoring a certain
1 J Waldron, ‘Is the Rule of Law an Essentially Contested Concept (in Florida)?’ (2002) 21 Law and Philosophy 137, 138 (hereinafter – ‘Waldron 2002’).
