Jessica Silbey’s _The Eureka Myth_
Book Roundtable at Notre Dame
November 7th, 2014
Notes from Peter DiCola
*Panel #1*
1) David Schwartz
— Praise for the book
— Will raise a few methodological issues
— Issue of representativeness of the sample.
— Need to trust Jessica’s selection of the quotes as well.
— There are about 50 interviews. When we want to discuss
particular communities of creators or inventors, such as inventors (i.e., not
lawyers, not creators), we are slicing the sample pretty thin. The number of
observations is small, limiting our ability to draw inference.
— If every one in the small sample is consistent, then that
may tell us something
— Concern that interviewees will tell the interviewer what
she wants to hear
2) Laura Murray
— In Laura’s department, when she has done work on
interviews, she gets questions about whether the results can be reproduced
— This book offers thick description
— The book is clear about methodology
— Organization: Jessica’s book goes through the creative
process step by step. By contrast, Laura’s book was organized case by case.
Each approach to organizing the discussion has advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage of Jessica’s approach is that it shows the commonalities across
different creators.
— Concern about copyright being an object of scorn in
selecting interviewees — Laura, in her book project, handled this by asking
about copyright last. Copyright fluttered away — the interviewees’ topics of
discussion went in other directions.
— “Mis-“ prefix & under-/over-enforcement discussion vs.
terms that are not law talk
— Less emphasis on groups in the structure Jessica chose;
less information on where ideas came from. But of course this is just a lumper
vs. splitter issue.
— Why creators don’t discuss money as a motivation.
Conditioning (of us scholars) not to question this. Other people supporting the
work — the artist’s spouse or mother. Place of privilege.
— Finally, a question about choosing pseudonyms. Most of the
names seemed to have Anglo origin.
3) Kara Swanson
— When reading, started counting for gender representation
within each field
— Comparison between Jessica’s interview data and what
historians are able to ask
— Post-1790 Eureka myth. Stories of Archimedes and Isaac
Newton are not related to IP. Then, after 1790, the myth gets tied to IP.
— Kara looked at two works: (1) F.M. Scherer’s study of
composers, 1650-1900 and (2) Christine McLeod’s book on the industrial
revolution 1660-1800. Similar questions: why compose? why invent? Jessica’s
data aligns with these pre-1790 studies.
— Scherer looks at the shift from patronage. Variation
across countries. Does copyright aid the shift to freelance work? Scherer finds
questionable support for this. No evidence on rate of creation or
commercialization/distribution. Petra Moser has a recent paper that does not
discuss and does not appear compatible with Scherer’s findings.
— McLeod discusses reasons to patent, e.g. patent to escape
guild, patent to replace a failing guild; prestige; preemption. IP as legal
insurance.
4) Zahr Said
— Book needed to be written. Lots of threads for future work
—What do we do about the data? Incentive story assumes money
should play a role.
— Different disciplinary methodology, happily
Point #1
— Literary study. Bifurcated argument. (1) accept data
gathered carefully, proxy these data for misalignment. (2) interpretive layer.
Jessica is asking us to accept her readings. textual interpretation, but not a
lot of discussion of multiplicity of meanings.
— Part (1) of the argument is convincing, part (2) not as much.
— Example on p. 186: how works arise vs. how they are
disseminated. Only in footnote 11 of the appendix is there an acknowledgement
of the textual interpretation issue, the possibility of alternative readings of
the quotes.
— distant reading vs. close reading. Debate in literary
theory. Franco Moretti as exemplar of strategy to treat literature as data.
Distant reading. Digital tools. Analyzing different amounts of data.
— For example, IP as fluid. Jessica is characterizing the
views, not relying on metaphor
— Here, close reading seems to be foreclosing multiple
meanings
— Example, in chapter 1 on inspired beginnings, “find THE
point.” Destabilizes larger categories?
— Maybe not such a law and humanities approach; maybe trying
to write for a partly law & econ or patent-focused audience.
Point #2
— change happens across time. but this study is a narrative
balance sheet, i.e. a snapshot. would love to see a narrative about income
flow, i.e. a dynamic picture. Copyright law knows this happens.
— example from recent Diane von Furstenberg interview on NPR
in which the designer discussed her career at different times and how she made
different assessments of her work at different times
Point #3
— Memory. Accounts shift. Myth-making.
*Question and Answer Session After Panel 1*
1) Nicole Garnett
— deeper and broader knowledge in follow-up studies.
fluidity in follow-up questions.
— motivating vs. enabling in IP. things that occur because
of IP, what could you/would you do without IP, who would/could do this without
IP.
— Robert Johnson contrasted with modern hip-hop artists in
their relationships to IP
— side jobs, distributional consequences
Jessica’s answer
— Not all creators rely on copyright. Commissions play a
huge role, for example, and those are not copyright.
— “Enabling” is the right word
2) Mark McKenna
—Simultaneously arguing against a narrative, but the
interpretive lens ends up incorporating it
Jessica’s answer
— All interviews transcribed in a database. Boolean
searches, etc. are possible
— One becomes invested in the words, and there’s a
path-dependence to that.
3) Peter DiCola
— having used different empirical methods (interviews,
surveys, case studies, observational quantitative studies), I have found
personally that interviews provide the most solid foundation
— qualitative studies allow one to rule things out,
especially about objective facts. more difficult when subjects are discussing
their motivations.
— quotes are still available in the text for the reader to
interpret. Jessica offering her interpretation does not foreclose the reader’s.
we still have to trust Jessica’s selection of quotes.
— discussion of Petra Moser’s recent paper on opera; might
be compatible because it focuses on a particular change in the legal regime in
some Italian states. (Kara responded that she thinks Scherer discussed this
same change and that he had different findings.)
Jessica’s answer
— Not overly concerned about cause in this research, as the
economists Scherer and Moser are.
4) Daniel Kelly
— Two questions for Jessica
— How did you identify the interviewees? Book mentions
snowball sampling.
— Geography — focused on the northeast?
Jessica’s answer
— Geography was Washington, DC and north.
— Identified relevant variables and select candidates based
on this. Ask a lot of people. Confidentiality was provided.
— Interviewees had to self-identify as a creator or someone
supporting creative work
— Variables included copyright vs. patent, new vs. old,
independent vs. employee
— had to find a few people for each box created by these
dichotomies
— based on preliminary interviews, rejected those who seemed
too close to previous interviewee
— sent hundreds of letters, got some responses
— protocol is a bare-bones qualitative interview
5) Barton Beebe
— Race, class, and gender. Will focus on gender.
— How does this fit into the methodology. Theory as “soft,”
quantitative as “hard.”
— Appreciated the “Mis-“ words. Prefix. Minor words to the
major words. Exceptions to the rule.
Jessica’s answer
— gender and *hierarchy*
— particular audience
— women are in the sample. the genders denoted with the
pseudonyms are accurate.
— in earlier drafts of the book, no names were used.
— sample is diverse ethnically and by class
6) Abraham Drassinower
— The fetish of the normative. Part of the world,
descriptively. Hard for lawyers to avoid normatively. The fetish of the
empirical opposes this.
— The fetish of cause vs. fluidity
— Law is part of the everyday. Tension between law and life.
Law must cut life to make sense of it.
Jessica’s answer
— binary is false in other disciplines (they don’t feel
traumatized), but there is this binary in law.
— There are moments of alignment
7) Kara Swanson
— Who is the audience for the book?
Jessica’s answer
— Law, policy, business people.
— Some business people have shown interest in restructuring
employment situations.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment