Sweat of the Brow, Creativity, and Authorship: On Originality in Canadian Copyright Law
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The paper offers a theoretical analysis of the tension between "sweat of the brow" and "creativity" approaches to the "originality" requirement in recent Canadian copyright jurisprudence. The paper formulates that tension as one between two different and incompatible versions of the very meaning and purpose of copyright law. On the one hand, the "sweat of the brow" approach reflects a "misappropriation" model of copyright law, for which fairness to the author as laborer is the central and animating concern. On the other hand, the "creativity" approach reflects a "public interest" model of copyright law, for which the production and dissemination of authorial works in the name of the public interest is the central and animating concern. In that context, the paper reveals the neglected influence of a third vision of copyright law: the "authorship" model. On that basis, the paper shows that, because it is not framed in terms of the traditional opposition between author and public, the authorship model offers a vision of copyright law for which respect for authorship is consistent with the public domain. In so doing, the paper engages themes fundamental to the Supreme Court of Canada's recent landmark decision in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.024 | 0.066 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.017 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".