Unauthorized Use: Transposing Structures of Ownership, Authorship, and Consent

Abstract

Media products have become increasingly fluid in a networked world, and users often find themselves stuck in a moment where laws and other long-standing modes of authorization no longer neatly apply. Institutional standards and the legal system adapt to technological innovation and social change to designate what is and is not “authorized use,” but these shifts are enacted in response to past moments of “unauthorized use” and cannot adequately account for the future. This dissertation is an exploration of “unauthorized use” and the ways in which ownership, consent, and authorship shape media circulation and use. I argue that authority is a structure that is built out of and for specific cultural contexts and can be moved from one environment to another to enact change and create new possibilities for media use. The process of determining unauthorized use is an analysis of which forms of authority are dominant over others, revealing authorization as a constant negotiation of power. This dissertation is based on three distinct case studies, all of which center moments of crisis and change to highlight attempts at resistance and the subversion of dominant paradigms about ownership, consent, and authorship . The first chapter looks at NFTs and demonstrates the current incompatibility of property law when applied to the digital domain and the failure of ownership as authority. The creation of a certificate to circulate digital goods similarly to physical ones is a failed attempt to regulate unauthorized use. The second chapter turns to Taylor Swift and traces the evolution of bodily autonomy in recent decades to its status as a relevant and powerful mode of authority. Unauthorized use in this case study is something set by the artist herself and the chapter uses Swift’s brand and star figure to demonstrate the process of re- and de-authorization that occurs in every instance of unauthorized use. The final substantive chapter looks at pornography as a genre defined by a lack of authorization in order to trace the social history of pornography the rise of authorship as a recognized and valued from of authority. I frame attempts at controlling, regulating, or even outlawing pornography as proxy wars for larger sociocultural issues rather than being specifically about porn itself. The chapter concludes with a historical overview of the recent evolution of the porn ecosystem, namely OnlyFans, to emphasize the role of authority in media movement and value, as illustrated in the first two chapters. I conclude the dissertation with a discussion of generative AI, a contra-example to showcase the abuse of authority and loss of control over ownership, consent, and authorship.