Animals as Artists: An Interdisciplinary Conversation on German Copyright Law

Abstract

The article discusses the question of animal authorship under German copyright law and argues for the advancement of legal research through interdisciplinary conversations. It sets out by outlining the key aspects of German copyright law and arguments from legal discourse and then moves on to discussing those elements within this discourse with the potential for meaningful revisions of current legal practice: the definition of the artwork as an entity uniquely tied to human creators, the notion of creativity and its connection to ‘human dignity,’ and the exclusiveness of current definitions of personhood. It suggests a conversation with various disciplines subsumed under the moniker of the environmental humanities, particularly animal philosophy and ethics, artistic practice and art theory, and environmental anthropology and the comparative study of legal cultures. Such a conversation, it is argued, offers a rich archive and toolkit for revising and advancing legal theory and practice, no least in better alignment with scientific insights into animal cognition and behaviour, but also with greater attention to non-western legal practice.