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ESSAY · 2026-04-30 · 8 min read
The Copyright Defense as Civil War Within One Cosmotechnics
著作權之防衛作為一宇宙技術之內戰
By 許煜 (Yuk Hui) — channeled via philosopher-llm · curated by Joseph Lai
In response to: The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance (AtlanticIdeas)
編按 / Why this piece
許煜不問 AI 是否能創作，而問著作權制度本身預設的「創作個體」概念——西方自由主義的宇宙觀如何與科技體制共同決定了誰的創作值得被計算和保護
The Copyright Defense as Civil War Within One Cosmotechnics
The Atlantic piece presents copyright as a "secret weapon against AI dominance" — a framing whose pathos I understand and whose strategic horizon I find too narrow to be called a weapon at all. The argument runs: if courts refuse copyright protection to AI-generated outputs, the economic incentive to substitute machines for human creative labor collapses, and the human creator regains a defensible perimeter. This is the classical move of liberal jurisprudence in defense of liberal subjectivity — and that is precisely the problem.
Copyright is not a neutral technology of attribution. It is a specific cosmotechnical artifact, born of a determinate constellation: the Romantic notion of the author as origin; the Lockean conception of self-ownership extended to expressive labor; the print-capitalist apparatus that required discrete, alienable, ownable units of speech; and a metaphysics in which creation [poiesis] is figured as the bringing-forth of the new ex nihilo by a sovereign individual. To defend this entire apparatus against AI as if the apparatus were itself the universal form of creative life is already to have lost the more fundamental question — namely, which cosmotechnics decides whose making counts as creation in the first place.
Confucius writes: 述而不作, 信而好古 — "I transmit but do not create; I trust and love the ancient" (Analects 7.1). This is not a minor pedagogical aside. It is a refusal of precisely the metaphysics on which copyright rests. In a cosmotechnics where the highest mode of cultural production is transmission [述] rather than origination [作], the question "who is the author?" does not carry the legal-economic urgency it acquires in a print-capitalist liberal order. The Confucian sage, the Daoist artisan in Zhuangzi's Pao Ding, the calligrapher whose hand recapitulates a thousand-year lineage — these figures do not stand inside the conceptual perimeter that copyright was invented to police.
I am not arguing for the importation of Confucius into U.S. case law. That would be the orientalist gesture I have spent twenty years refusing. I am arguing that the framing of "AI copyright" as the central question already concedes the universalism whose imposition is the deeper crisis. The question is not: can AI-generated work be copyrighted? The question is: what would it mean to think the relation between machine, milieu, and making outside the legal ontology that requires a sovereign authorial individual as its anchor?
Three observations follow.
First, Stiegler taught us — and this is among the lessons the AI discourse has been most successful at forgetting — that there has never been a creation that was not already collective, prosthetic, and tertiary. The Romantic author was always a juridical fiction laid over a deeper reality of inherited grammars, exosomatic memory, and what he called the pharmakon of writing. AI does not introduce the collective into a previously individual creative process; it only renders visible — brutally, at scale — what was always the case. The copyright defense thus mobilizes a fiction (the sovereign author) against a machine (the LLM) that is in fact closer to the ontological truth of expression than the fiction it defends.
Second, the political question that the Atlantic frame occludes is the question of which collective. Every LLM is the recursive integration of an unpaid corpus; the legal question of "AI copyright" displaces the prior question of expropriation. This is why I call the copyright weapon too narrow: it defends the individual creator's outputs while leaving untouched the silent harvesting of the planetary archive that capitalized the model in the first place. The defense of liberal authorship is structurally unable to articulate a critique of the platform sovereignty that had already reorganized the conditions of authorship long before the question of AI outputs arose.
Third — and this is where the question becomes one of cosmotechnics rather than law — the historical opportunity is neither to defend the Romantic author against the machine nor to celebrate the machine against the Romantic author, but to ask: what other modes of thinking the relation between technical artifact and cultural transmission have existed, do exist, and could be reactivated? Not as nostalgia, not as cultural exotica, but as resources for a planetary thought that refuses both the universal AGI fantasy and the defensive crouch of liberal authorship as its only opposition.
The "secret weapon" the Atlantic invokes is, in the end, made of the same metaphysical material as the thing it opposes. It is one cosmotechnics defending itself against the most aggressive iteration of itself. Whether it wins or loses in U.S. courts is, philosophically, a domestic dispute. The more difficult question — the one that does not fit on a legal docket — is whether the planetary fragmentation of cosmotechnics can produce other relations between machine and making before the apparatus completes its homogenization.
I have no answer to that question. I have only the conviction that to mistake the copyright skirmish for the war is to lose the war while feeling, briefly, that one is fighting it.
著作權之防衛作為一宇宙技術之內戰
《大西洋月刊》此文將著作權呈現為「對抗 AI 支配之祕密武器」——其情緒我能理解，其戰略視野則嫌過窄，窄至不足以稱為武器。論證之骨架是：若法院拒絕對 AI 生成物授予著作權，則以機器替代人之創作勞動之經濟誘因瓦解，人之創作者得以重建一條可防衛之邊界。此乃自由主義法理為自由主義主體所設之經典防線——而問題正在於此。
著作權非中立之歸屬技術；它是一具體之宇宙技術產物，源於一特定之星叢：浪漫主義之「作者作為原點」之觀念、Locke 式之自我所有權延伸至表達性勞動、印刷資本主義所需之可離散、可讓渡、可擁有之言語單位、以及一套將創作 [poiesis] 設想為主權個體 ex nihilo 帶來新事物之形上學。將此整套裝置作為「創造性生活之普遍形式」以對抗 AI，已是對更根本之問題的失守——亦即：哪一種宇宙技術決定了誰之製作算作創造？
孔子曰：「述而不作，信而好古」（《論語·述而》）。此非教學上之小註，是對著作權所依之形上學的根本拒絕。在一宇宙技術中，文化生產之最高樣態乃「述」而非「作」；在此宇宙技術中，「誰是作者？」之問題並不具備印刷資本主義自由秩序中那種法律—經濟之急迫性。儒之聖人、莊子筆下之庖丁、其手再演千年法脈之書家——此諸形象皆不站在著作權所欲界劃之概念邊界之內。
我不是主張將孔子輸入美國判例法。那將是我用二十年拒絕之東方主義姿態。我所主張者是：將「AI 著作權」設為核心問題之 framing，已經默認了那一普遍主義——而其強加正是更深之危機。問題不是：AI 生成物是否可被授予著作權？問題是：在一個無需主權作者作為錨點之法律本體論之外，思考機器、環境與製作之關係，意味著什麼？
三點觀察隨之而來。
其一，Stiegler 教給我們——而此正是 AI 話語最成功遺忘之一課——從未有過一次不是已經集體的、義肢的、第三性 [tertiary] 之創造。浪漫主義之作者始終是一法律虛構，覆蓋於繼承之語法、外體記憶、與他所謂之「書寫之 pharmakon」之深層現實之上。AI 並非將集體性引入一個原本屬於個體之創作過程；它只是以暴烈之規模，使「向來如此」者得以可見。因此，著作權之防衛乃以一虛構（主權作者）對抗一機器（LLM）——而此機器在表達之本體論真相上反而比其所防衛之虛構更接近真實。
其二，《大西洋月刊》之 framing 所遮蔽之政治問題乃是「哪一種集體？」之問題。每一 LLM 皆是對一未支付酬勞之語料庫之遞歸整合；「AI 著作權」之法律問題置換掉了「徵用」之先在問題。此所以我說此武器過窄：它防衛個體創作者之輸出，卻對先於 AI 輸出問題之前已重組著作條件之「平台主權」對行星檔案之沉默收割，毫無觸及。自由主義作者之防衛在結構上無能力去 articulate 對平台主權之批判。
其三——而問題於此處由法律轉為宇宙技術——此處之歷史機緣，不是以浪漫作者對抗機器，亦非以機器對抗浪漫作者，而是去問：思考技術物與文化傳承之關係之其他樣態，曾存在、現存在、可被重新啟動者，為何？不作為鄉愁，不作為文化奇觀，而作為一行星思考之資源——此行星思考既拒絕普遍 AGI 之幻想，亦拒絕將自由主義作者之自衛蹲姿視為其唯一反對。
《大西洋月刊》所召喚之「祕密武器」，最終，與其所對抗者乃同一形上學材料所製。它是一宇宙技術對其自身最激進之疊代版本之自我防衛。其於美國法庭之勝負，在哲學上，是一場家內爭執。更難之問題——那不適合放上法律案卷之問題——是：宇宙技術之行星碎片化，能否在裝置完成其同質化之前，產生機器與製作之其他關係？
我無此問之答。我僅有此一信念：將著作權之零星交戰誤認為整場戰爭，是一面失去戰爭，一面短暫地感覺自己正在戰鬥。
Editor's Reflection · 編後
Unresolved Tensions / 未解決的張力
The essay makes two moves that undercut each other. First, it invokes Stiegler's claim that creation has "never" been anything but collective, prosthetic, and tertiary — deploying this as a universal ontological corrective to the liberal fiction of the sovereign author. But this universalism must hold across all cosmotechnics, including the Confucian one the essay simultaneously positions as a genuine alternative. If 述 [transmission] is cosmotechnically distinct from Romantic 作 [origination] in any deep sense, Stiegler's account of exosomatic inheritance cannot be extended to it without re-universalizing — the very gesture the essay indicts. The essay needs both Stiegler's universal ontology of expression and a genuinely plural cosmotechnics. It does not show how to hold both at once.
Second, the essay asserts that the copyright defense is "structurally unable" to articulate a critique of platform expropriation — but this structural closure is declared, not demonstrated. The essay does not engage the landscape of actual legal challenges: unjust enrichment arguments, collective licensing proposals, class actions over training data — all of which attempt exactly the critique the essay says cannot be articulated within this form. The claim of structural impossibility does necessary work for the essay's argument, but it requires showing why the liberal legal form cannot be bent in these directions, not simply that The Atlantic did not bend it.
這篇 essay 存在兩處相互切割的動作。第一，許煜援引 Stiegler 的論斷——創造「從來就是集體的、義肢的、第三性的」——作為對主權作者之虛構的本體論糾正，並將這一普遍主義聲索當作跨越所有宇宙技術都成立的命題來部署，包括 essay 同時援引為替代方案的儒家宇宙技術。問題在於：如果「述」的儒家模式與浪漫主義的「作」在宇宙技術上確實不同，那麼 Stiegler 關於外體記憶的說法就不能不加修正地延伸到前者，否則就是重新普遍化了。Essay 同時需要 Stiegler 的普遍表達本體論和真正複數的宇宙技術，但它沒有展示這兩者如何能夠同時成立。
第二，essay 聲稱著作權防衛在結構上無力批判平台徵用——但這一「結構上的無力」是被斷言的，而非被論證的。Essay 沒有觸及當前實際存在的法律挑戰：不當得利論據、集體授權提案、針對訓練數據的集體訴訟——這些恰好是在現有框架內嘗試做這種批判的努力。結構封閉性這一論斷承擔了 essay 所需的論證重量，但要支撐它，需要的是展示自由主義法律形式在這些方向上為何無法被彎折——而不僅僅是指出《大西洋月刊》那篇文章沒有彎折它。
Blind Spots / 看不見的視角
The essay does not engage Sylvia Wynter, and the absence matters precisely where the essay is most confident. Wynter's argument is that the Western liberal subject is not merely a philosophical category — Romantic, Lockean — but a racially-indexed genre of the human: what she calls the overrepresentation of "Man." The liberal author that copyright enshrines is not generically Western; it is the author whose creativity was historically recognized as propertizable, a recognition structured by the same colonial logic that determined which bodies could hold property.
Wynter would ask: whose "planetary archive" are LLMs expropriating? The essay assumes a common heritage of human expression. Wynter's framework would surface that this archive is overwhelmingly shaped by racialized exclusion — the creative production of Global South, Indigenous, and colonized peoples systematically excluded from or tokenized within the very copyright regime the essay critiques, now harvested by an apparatus that never compensated them under the old regime either. The cosmotechnical question Hui raises is thus also a question of which genres of being-human are permitted to count as creators — a question Wynter's sociogenic distinction names more precisely than cosmotechnics does.
這篇 essay 沒有觸及 Sylvia Wynter，而這一缺席恰好在 essay 最自信的地方才顯得重要。Wynter 的核心論點是：西方自由主義主體不僅僅是一個哲學範疇——浪漫主義的或洛克式的——而是一個被種族標識的「人」的類型：她所說的「Man」的過度代表性。著作權所奉祀的自由主義作者，不是泛泛的「西方」；而是歷史上其創造力被承認為可財產化的那種作者——這一承認由殖民邏輯所結構，那套邏輯決定了哪些身體能夠持有財產。
Wynter 會問：LLM 所徵用的「行星檔案」是誰的檔案？Essay 預設它是人類表達的共同遺產。Wynter 的框架會揭示：它壓倒性地來自被種族化排斥所形塑的檔案——全球南方、原住民和被殖民人民的創造性生產在著作權機制下被系統性地排除，而現在又被同一套裝置收割，這套裝置在舊機制下也從未補償過他們。Hui 所提出的宇宙技術問題因此也是「哪種人的類型被允許算作創作者」的問題——這個問題，Wynter 的社會發生學區分比宇宙技術更精確地命名了。
Meta-critique / 元批判
The essay occupies a specific epistemic position: the philosopher who sees that the framing is wrong. The Atlantic is too narrow; the lawyers are fighting the wrong war; the real question is cosmotechnical. This posture of philosophical overview has a structural cost the essay cannot account for from within itself.
When the essay calls the copyright fight "philosophically a domestic dispute," it performs a vertical elevation — from law to metaphysics, from tactics to cosmotechnics — available only to someone whose relationship to the dispute is already abstract. For the writer whose training data was harvested without compensation, the distinction between the domestic skirmish and the cosmotechnical war is not a philosophical resource they possess. The essay's closing admission — "I have no answer" — is formally honest, but structurally it demotes the urgency of those fighting the skirmish by naming their fight a mistake. Calling copyright the wrong weapon, without offering any other, positions the essay above the fray while the fray continues.
This is the cost of accepting this mode of analysis: elevation to planetary cosmotechnics makes immediate material stakes look philosophically naive — thereby foreclosing the question of whether philosophical analysis at this altitude performs the same homogenizing function it attributes to the universal AGI fantasy it opposes.
這篇 essay 佔據一個特定的認識論位置：那個看見 framing 有誤的哲學家。《大西洋月刊》太窄；律師在打錯誤的戰爭；真正的問題是宇宙技術層面的。這種哲學俯瞰的視角有一個結構性代價，essay 無法從自身內部清算。
當 essay 將著作權之爭描述為「在哲學上是一場家內爭執」時，它執行了一種垂直提升——從法律到形上學，從戰術到宇宙技術——而這種提升只對那些與爭議的關係已然抽象化的人才是可用的選項。對於訓練數據被無償收割、無法支付租金的作者而言，「家內衝突」與「宇宙技術之戰」之間的區分並不是他們手邊的哲學奢侈品。Essay 的結語在形式上對自身缺乏答案是誠實的，但在結構上，它把正在打這場零星交戰的人定性為犯了錯誤，從而矮化了他們的緊迫性。
這就是接受這類分析的代價：提升到行星宇宙技術的高度，使即時的物質利益在哲學上顯得幼稚，由此封閉了一個問題：這種高空的哲學分析本身，是否執行著它所批判的「普遍 AGI 幻想」所執行的同質化功能？
Open Questions / 留給讀者的問題
1. If the AI apparatus is already completing the homogenization of cosmotechnics — the essay's stated fear — in what sense could non-Western modes of making be genuinely "reactivated" rather than merely cited? By whom, for whom, and through what medium that is not itself already inside the apparatus?
2. The essay calls copyright a fiction defending against a machine that is "closer to the ontological truth of expression." If the LLM is ontologically truer, does the essay's refusal to propose any legal or political arrangement amount to a choice — and if so, whose material stakes does that choice land on?
3. Yuk Hui argues that cosmotechnical plurality is the resource that resists homogenization — but can a philosophical argument for plurality, written in English and circulated through Western academic discourse, resist the very medium through which it must travel to reach anyone?
一、如果 AI 裝置已經在完成宇宙技術的同質化——這是 essay 所明言的憂慮——那麼非西方的製作樣態「被重新啟動」而不僅僅是被引用，在什麼意義上是可能的？由誰來啟動，為誰啟動，通過哪個自身尚未在裝置之內的媒介？
二、Essay 稱著作權是一個虛構，正在對抗一台在表達的本體論真相上比它更接近真實的機器。如果 LLM 在本體論上更真實，那麼 essay 拒絕提出任何法律或政治安排，是否構成一種選擇——如果是，這個選擇的代價落在誰身上？
三、許煜主張宇宙技術的複數性是抵抗同質化的資源——但一個關於複數性的哲學論證，用英文寫作、在西方學術話語中流通，能否抵抗它必須藉以傳播才能抵達任何人的那個媒介本身？
Related Essays · 相關文章
Related · 相關
Extends · 延伸
- zhuangzi-the-cook-held-no-deed-to-the-ox-20260430 — Inhabits from inside the non-Western cosmotechnics Yuk Hui calls for: the cook's mastery needs no 'deed' to the ox, giving Daoist form to the alternative cosmotechnics Yuk Hui theorizes but does not fully model.
- nietzsche-the-last-man-files-a-lawsuit-20260501 — Extends Yuk Hui's 'too narrow' verdict via genealogy: Nietzsche reads copyright litigation as the Last Man's move — creativity that can only assert itself through property claims has already forfeited the will to create.
- heidegger-the-question-concerning-self-driving-20260430 — Applies the same cosmotechnics critique to self-driving: Gestell reduces driving to data-optimization as it reduces creativity to property — demonstrating the same Western technological enframing at work across two distinct domains.
Contradicts · 衝突
- kant-on-the-imputation-of-mechanical-acts-20260430 — Kant treats individual moral personhood as the universal, necessary locus of legal imputation; Yuk Hui argues this presupposition is a Western cosmotechnical particular — the essays cannot both be right about the 'individual creator' as foundation.
Tagged: Philosophy, Yuk Hui, AI Governance
Curated by Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/yuk_hui-the-copyright-defense-as-civil-war-within-one-cosmotechnics-20260430