Skapandets rätt : ett kulturvetenskapligt perspektiv på den svenska upphovsrättens historia

Sammanfattning: The Rights of Creativity is a study of Swedish copyright history from the birth of Sweden’s first copyright legislation in the early 19th century to the passing of the current law in 1960. As the title suggests, the law is regarded as part of a wider cultural context and the dissertation moves beyond the borders of legal history and analyses the law in relation to the history of literature, film, television and other media that partly reflect and partly intersect with the legislative process. The main object of the study is to see how the author is constructed in legal and cultural discourses during the 19th and 20th century.The dissertation focuses on three Swedish copyright laws from 1877, 1919 and 1960, but these laws and their preambles are also related to a few contemporary cultural intertexts, namely: August Strindberg’s novel Röda rummet [The Red Room] from 1879; the director Mauritz Stiller’s films Gunnar Hedes Saga [The Blizzard] and Gösta Berlings saga [The Saga of Gösta Berling] from 1923 and 1924, and finally the television shows Hylands hörna and Skäggen from 1962 and 1963. Apart from this it also pays some attention to the Freedom of the Press Act from 1810 that came to include Sweden’s first copyright statement, as well as to the development after 1960. Eventually it aims to show how the historical legacy has affected the copyright legislation and debates of today.