With its assessment of cases involving Oscar Wilde, Cindy Lee Garcia, Arne Svenson, and Hulk Hogan and analysis of authorial inquiries raised by slavery daguerreotypes, surveillance art, paparazzi photographs, revenge porn, and celebrity sex tapes, Chapter 1 identifies and critiques the problematic conflation of copyright’s authorship and fixation requirements that functions to deny performers property interests in creative works. Copyright’s authorship-as-fixation regime rests on a faulty premise, betrays copyright law’s role in recognizing and rewarding creativity, and denies authorial rights to a class of individuals – subjects – who provide significant original contributions to works within copyright’s traditional subject matter. Just as significantly, given the dramatic disparities in capital accumulation and control over the tools of creative production and continuing inequalities in the representation of women and persons of color behind the camera, the authorship-as-fixation doctrine has had far-reaching societal consequences by propertizing the white male gaze and giving legal bite to a system of production and ownership that imbues rightsholders with the power to control representations of female and non-white bodies.