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This article deals with copyright regulation meeting the quite rapid societal changes associated with digitization, and it does so by reinterpreting Karl Renner's classical texts in the light of contemporary cognitive theory of conceptual metaphors and embodiment. From a cognitive theory perspective, I focus on the notion that the legal norms only appear to be unchanged-the Renner distinction between form and function. This includes social norms, technological development, and changes in social structures in general, which create a social and cognitive reinterpretation of law. This article, therefore, analyzes the contemporary push for copyright as properly, which I relate to historical claims for copyright as property as well as de facto legal revisions in intellectual property faced with the challenges of digitization. Of particular relevance here is what Renner described in terms of properly as an "institution of domination and control," and thus the increased measures for control that are added to a digital context in the name of copyright.
Introduction: Between Form and Function
Karl Renner, the Austro-Marxist and early contributor to sociology of law who also became the first prime minister of the young Austrian nation, focused on the role of property and contract in changing Western European societies. In the early twentieth century, he used the rather fierce metaphor of Chronos to describe the progression of property by stating that. "[t]he evolution of property does not rest, it is like a Chronos who devours-other people's children" (Renner 2010/1949: 110),1 In this sense, I will also focus on the notion of property and its shifting claims over time. Influenced by the Marxist, theories of his time, Karl Renner's theoretical examination includes a conception of society as a dialectics between a legal superstructure and an economic base (Grace 8c Wilkinson 1978: 94). This means that Renner relies on a Marxist perspective to construct a sociological theory of law (Trevino 2008: 119-27). Of key interest in Renner's work is the analytical separation between legal institutions from their social functions-that is, in the words of Kahn-Freund (1949/2010: 3), "the factual results of their application." Renner stresses that it is not law that drives the changes in its substratum when he argues, for example, that such as "economic change does not immediately and automatically bring about changes...