Tonight on Youtube PBS News had a video about data influencing the arts. Their focus was on clothing design, not writing. But at one point they interviewed a couple of lawyers about how this could affect copyright and there were some interesting questions raised.
One was, with artists (dress designers but it could eventually apply to authors and may already) being influenced by data does the artist still have as strong a claim on his/her creation. And, since that data comes from their customers initially, how much claim do the customers have on both the data and the creation.
Of course these were questions, not answers, meant to provoke thought. The one sort of answer they had was that these questions would influence the shape of copyright in the future. They wouldn't guess how.
So, Amazon, if you're reading this, if you use data generated from my habits and preferences to determine which books to make available to me I want royalties on those books.
Anybody think that might happen?
Barry