11 Apr 2016
Many of the sports and financial news stories on the Internet are written by computers. Computers also draw, paint, and compose music. Copyright law requires an identifiable human author because authors own copyrights and computers do not possess the personhood necessary to own property. The Copyright Office and some courts and commentators go further, demanding that the copyrightable expression in a work emanate from a human being. That requirement denies the incentive of copyright to an increasingly large group of works that are indistinguishable from works created by human beings. The article argues that a computer user who initiates the creation of computer-generated expression should be recognized as the author and copyright owner of the resulting work.