From the excellent growing debate and commentary section “The People Vs Copyright” at Opendemocracy.net:

“Quite simply, then, copyright turns symbolic forms into property, and market conditions ensure it is held and exploited by corporations. But this is not a reality which sits very easily with public opinion. For while the concept of private property in tangible goods, or chattels, is deeply ingrained in Western societies, the same cannot be said about symbolic works. A strong consensus, emerging first in the Enlightenment, has it that culture should circulate freely. The Romantic movement then contributes the idea that art and commerce are opposed, that the artist is in heroic opposition to the drive for profit.

It is something of a contradiction, then, that in the modern era the figure of the Romantic artist is invoked to justify copyright – the very basis of commerce in culture.”

» Opendemocracy.net: “Beyond romance and repression: social authorship in a capitalist age” by Jason Toynbee