Training Data Transparency
Why we credit. Why we protect.
A timeline of voices.
Legal, cultural, and rhetorical.
That shaped the foundation of intellectual property in the United States of America.
May 2, 1783 – Continental Congress (inspired by Noah Webster’s petition)
“Nothing is more properly a man’s own than the fruit of his study, and that the protection and security of literary property would greatly tend to encourage genius, to promote useful discoveries …”
May 15, 1784 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart writes to Leopold Mozart:
“…I would ask you to have the 4 concertos |: copied in your presence at home :|, for the copyists in Salzburg are to be trusted as little as those in Vienna; – I have quite reliable information that Hofstetter makes double copies of Haydn’s music…”
“…they could not get into anyone else’s hands except by fraud of this kind; – personally, I have everything copied in my room and in my presence…”
August 18, 1787 – James Madison proposed what would become Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution: (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8)
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
August 25, 1939 – Victor Fleming (Director), The Wizard of Oz
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
The Constitution promised it.
The 1976 Copyright Act delivered it; federal, fair, and forward thinking.
Fair use is the claim; Human expression was the cost.