"In this world so encoded with the internet and other navigations, I still prefer the old-fashioned artisanal kiss that has always conveyed so much."
Mario Benedetti
Amidst the world's ongoing debates regarding the positive or negative impacts of generative artificial intelligence technologies and the need to regulate or even control them to prevent their mass proliferation and alleged control over humanity, today I wanted to take a pause and revisit the origins of the evolution of intellectual property and, in particular, the right of authorship as an important source to be considered in these discussions.
Revisiting the origins of the construction process that has been taking place in the regulation of this discipline for centuries will allow us to draw from history in relation to what lies ahead in the medium term regarding these issues, which undoubtedly pose new challenges to this field."
As recalled by the Venezuelan copyright scholar Ricardo Antequera Parilli[1], when the liberal ideology, developed in part by the English philosopher and father of classical liberalism, John Locke, came into being, he precisely stated: "Every man has a property in his own person, and that the labour of his body and the work of his hands are properly his." This laid the foundation for the recognition of modern copyright, already implemented under the Anglo-Saxon concept through the Statute of Anne in 1709 in England.
Therefore, it was not surprising that Lakanal and Le Chapelier, as speakers in the projects that eventually became the famous Decrees of 1791 and 1793, defended the rights of authors as the most sacred and personal of all properties. Similar expressions were later made by Miguel Antonio Caro when he enshrined the protection of intellectual property in Colombian 1886 Constitution, a provision that continues to exist today in Article 61 of the Colombian Political Constitution (1991). Subsequently, we witnessed the international development of protection with the establishment of the Berne Convention of 1886, the Rome Convention of 1961 for the protection of performers, producers of phonograms, and broadcasting organizations, the TRIPS Agreement under the WTO, and finally, the WIPO Internet Treaties of 1996 on copyright (WCT) and performances and phonograms (WPPT).
Finally, I must mention the Argentine copyright scholar Delia Lipszyc, who, in describing the foundations of intellectual property protection as the basis for generating knowledge for the benefit of humanity, also pointed out that Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 determined the following human rights:
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which he or she is the author.
Note that these are not conflicting provisions; they are complementary. Therefore, close attention should be paid to all the developments that occur amidst the challenges posed by new technologies, changes in business models in the content industry, and interactions with other disciplines that may also be affected, such as data protection, right to image, and consumer protection laws, among others.
Undoubtedly, the developments we are experiencing today will generate movements at all levels, and we must be prepared to take a position in which developing countries will maintain their guidelines. It feels like the early 1990s when discussions about the internet were proposed within the framework of WIPO, addressing questions like: Should we regulate everything that happens on the internet? Is the existing framework sufficient to respond to this new reality of using protected content? The results led to the aforementioned Internet Treaties."