Jack Kessler wrote: Agreed as to copyright, then -- yes very Mickey Mouse, that extension, the Disney-fication of intellectual property, in fact -- also as to conflating disembodied texts with physical objects, although Pixar may be working on that as a project, now...
Correct about Mackenzie: "bibliographers should be concerned to show that forms effect meaning" -- in the sense of "create" the latter... Not create it entirely, though, I don't think he went that far. Certainly "effect" is the stronger term. But even if he used your word, don't you think he meant mine?
I wouldn't think he supposed form was entirely determinative of function, in any extreme sense: that it affects it, in the case of books, yes no doubt -- both true in fact and yes he meant that -- but can't book texts have a function if separated from their form? Form=function is for (some) architects only, I'd thought.
I've recently read "Livre," by Michel Melot, which credits some of Mackenzie's thinking. In France the texte became entirely separated from the chose, per Barthes and several others, and Melot like many lovers of The Book believes that's a pity.
I do too. Also a loss and even incorrect... I believe we can do both, and now are doing so better thanks to digitization.