ABSTRACT
With pirates and Indians and orphans galore, the critical literature on copyright and cultural heritage reads at times like a cross between Oliver Twist and Peter Pan. From literary paternity to piracy, the law is itself littered with colourful metaphors for creativity, property, and appropriation, at times even matching in its poetics the works that fall within its scope. Indeed, copyright sometimes seems to figure the publishing house as a paternity ward while more and more it is making an unwilling orphanage of the archive, the library, and the museum.
