Having done the readings for this coming week and being exposed to some classical ideas about authorship and the impact of authorial production on society, I was interested in seeing what the legal definition of author might be. From a quick google search the first set of results dealt with Foucault's concepts of what an author is and some large databases of famous authors. After following a few links and perusing a few poorly made pages, I found this link to the U.S. Copyright Office.

That page obviously has a lot of information on it and a lot of legal jargon that might not be pertinent at this stage in the semester. However, I do think its interesting to look at all the amendments that have been added as time has passed, and to skim over some of the more recent additions to see that ways that concepts of who owns what has changed.

Here's a link to the form to fill out to copyright a sound recording. Interesting to see the level of detail that precedes the actual form itself and to think about the lengths people have to go to to protect their own work.