"In this deeply considered study of the origins and aftershocks of the US Supreme Court's landmark Burrow-Giles v. Sarony decision, one of the world's leading copyright scholars deftly probes the tensions between authorship and its mechanical implements in terms that reach from the 19th century invention of photography to the 21st century's experiments with artificial intelligence. A must-read not only for anyone interested in the copyright history of photography, but anyone interested in the drama of authorship in a mechanized world."--Paul Goldstein, Lillick Professor of Law, Stanford Law School.