»It is well-documented that the philosophical justification of copyright is premised on the idea of the romantic author, the sole suffering genius sitting in isolation and producing works of genius. The first serious challenge to the idea of the romantic author emerged with the invention of photography. Bernard Edelman states that "the eruption of the modern techniques of the reproduction of the real - photographic apparatuses, cameras - surprises the law in the quietude of its categories." Initially the law was not ready for the challenge that would be posed to it by this new technology. Faced with the question of whether a photograph could be considered on the same plane as a painting, the initial response of the courts was in the negative. For French law, the crucial question was whether or not the mechanical product could be said to have anything of the soul in it at all. An authored work (it was argued) is imbued with something of the human soul, but a machine-produced work is completely soulless. 18. Ibid. Yet, this soulless craft had at the same time also become an important economic activity, with thousands in France making a living through photography and photographic technologies. France itself was exporting photographic images, and demands were soon made for the protection of these images, predicating that "the soulless photographer will be set up as an artist and the filmmaker as a creator since the relations of production will demand it".« (Lawrence Liang)

»Prior to photography, representation inherently had stamps of personality that allowed such representation (painting, drawing, engraving et alia) to be easily and significantly distinguished from that part of the material world it was representing, as well as from other artistic representations (even of the same referent). The earliest French legal pronouncements on photography were reluctant to grant it copyright protection, precisely because it was thought to have no personality and to be a mechanical copy of nature. When the court did extend copyright protection to photography and admitted its personality, it was faced with how to distinguish it from the natural. The camera could no longer be interpreting as transparently reproducing the real. Edelman calls this the subjectivisation of the machine. The camera can no longer be both a transparent reproducer of the real; it has been found always to invest the real with the personality of its subject (the photographer). This has resulted in a number of ad hoc decisions to prevent ‘over-appropriation’ of the real.« (Frederic Wasser, M/C Journal)