Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2012 Worth a Thousand Words: The mI ages of Copyright Law Rebecca Tushnet Georgetown University Law Center,
[email protected] Georgetown Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 11-115 This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/fwps_papers/148 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1911352 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2012) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/fwps_papers Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Intellectual Property Commons, and the Other Law Commons Worth a Thousand Words: The Images of Copyright Law Rebecca Tushnet † Abstract: Copyright starts with the written word as its model, then tries to fit everything else into the literary mode. It oscillates between two positions on non-textual creative works such as images—they are either transparent, or they are opaque. When courts treat images as transparent, they deny that interpretation is necessary, claiming that the meaning of an image is so obvious as to admit of no serious debate and that the image is a mere representation of reality. When they treat images as opaque, they deny that interpretation is possible, pretending that images are so far from being able to be discussed and analyzed using words that there is no point in trying. This oscillation between opacity and transparency has been the source of much bad law. This article explores the ungovernability of images in copyright, beginning with an overview of the power of images in the law more generally.