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In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work, whether that work is in written, graphic, or recorded medium. The creation of such a work is an act of authorship. Thus, a sculptor, painter, or composer, is an author of their respective sculptures, paintings, or compositions, even though in common parlance, an author is often thought of as the writer of a book, article, play, or other written work. In the case of a work for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered the author of the work, even if they did not write or otherwise create the work, but merely instructed another individual to do so. Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work, i.e. the author. If more than one person created the work, then a case of joint authorship takes place. Copyright laws differ around the world. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of 'original works of authorship.'" Some works are considered to be authorless. For example, the monkey selfie copyright dispute in the 2010s involved photographs taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to a nature photographer. The photographer asserted authorship of the photographs, which the United States Copyright Office denied, stating: "To qualify as a work of 'authorship' a work must be created by a human being". More recently, questions have arisen as to whether images or text created by a generative artificial intelligence have an author. Legal significance of authorship Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, [or] certain other intellectual works" gives rights to this person, the owner of the copyright, especially the exclusive right to engage in or authorize any production or distribution of their work. Any person or entity wishing to use intellectual property held under copyright must receive permission from the copyright holder to use this work, and often will be asked to pay for the use of copyrighted material. The copyrights on intellectual work expire after a certain time. It enters the public domain, where it can be used without limit. Copyright laws in many jurisdictions – mostly following the lead of the United States, in which the entertainment and publishing industries have very strong lobbying power – have been amended repeatedly since their inception, to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder. Technically, someone owns their work from the time it's created. A notable aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that, in many jurisdictions, it can be passed down to another, upon one's death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, but has access to the same legal benefits. Intellectual property laws are complex. Works of fiction involve trademark law, likeness rights, fair use rights held by the public (including the right to parody or satirize), and many other interacting complications. Authors may portion out the different rights that they hold to different parties at different times, and for different purposes or uses, such as the right to adapt a plot into a film, television series, or video game. If another party chooses to adapt the work, they may have to alter plot elements or character names in order to avoid infringing previous adaptations. An author may also not have rights when working under contract that they would otherwise have, such as when creating a work for hire (e.g., hired to write a city tour guide by a municipal government that totally owns the copyright to the finished work), or when writing material using intellectual property owned by others (such as when writing a novel or screenplay that is a new installment in an already established media franchise). In the United States, the Copyright Clause of the Constitution of the United States (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) provides the Congress with the power of "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The language regarding authors was derived from proposals by Charles Pinckney, "to secure to authors exclusive rights for a limited time", and by James Madison, "to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited time", or, in the alternative, "to encourage, by proper premiums & Provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries". Both proposals were referred to the Committee of Detail, which reported back a proposal containing the final language, which was incorporated into the Constitution by unanimous agreement of the convention. Philosophical views of the nature of authorship In literary theory, critics find complications in the term author beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a literary text. Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author. He writes, in his essay "Death of the Author" (1968), that "it is language which speaks, not the author." The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture"; it is never original. With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us." The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author. Michel Foucault argues in his essay "What is an author?" (1969) that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author." For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function." Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a writ.... Discover the Author popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Author books.