What is a multimedia author?

Firstly, a multimedia author is anonymous; the author is a sexless, ageless, unidentifiable entity known only to the world wide web by a username, an IP address, or a location. As Focault says, the author becomes identifiable and mentioned only when necessity demands that he or she becomes "subject to punishment." On the web, anyone can be an author, until plagiarism and copyright become an issue, and then the question of authorship is debated.

Secondly, Focault says "the author-function is not universal or constant in all discourse." As the world progresses, the idea of authorship changes and morphs depending on the popular discourse and attitudes of the time. In written text, when published on sheets of paper and bound by leather, a single author or groups of authors place their name or names on the work denoting their authorship, their ownership, their copyright. Multimedia authors are free from claiming official authorship - they are not bound by the laws of paper and pen. They may avoid recognition, they may disperse their work without a title, a claim, or ownership of the work. A multimedia author does not have to tie his or her name to the work to lend it credibility. A multimedia author does not have to worry about copyright - copyright is a choice in the free community of sharing, the forum for all, the blank canvas, the internet. The internet is a new society open to all, governed by its own as yet unwritten rules.

The work of a multimedia author expresses the creativity and innovation of the creator - the author is a ghost, the author is "dead" (Barthes), the author is invisible. Yet, unlike text published on paper, the multimedia author is alive. The author can revisit the work, recreating, reinventing, remixing the original. The multimedia author is never finished.