A Response Paper to Prof. Shavell’s: 'Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished?'

Abstract

Undoubtedly, the idea of strong property rights is the underlying idea of economics and one of the main sources of economic incentive. In his paper, Prof. Shavell (see Shavell, 2009) seems to question and eventually im- pugn the idea of the economic efficiency of property rights in the market place of ideas in the academic world. In this regard, I will criticize his paper with the economic methods and will explain how Prof. Shavell's idea of the abolishing copyrights for the academic works might suffer from inconsistencies and also lacks the merits in generating a more economically efficient atmosphere for the academic works. In this paper, first I will discuss the most critical role of Copyright Law which in my view is the striking an optimal balance between two contrasting ideas, namely, fostering individuals' incentives for creativity on the one hand, and on the other hand, spread and dissemination of knowledge. I will then turn to the publication fee problem in an academic copyright free world and show how it may adversely affect the motivation of individuals in the market even if borne by the universities or third parties. The third problem with the abolition of copyright may arise from the distinction between academic and non-academic works and also textbooks and non textbooks and its consequences which may cause free riding problem. From an international standpoint, the abolition of copyright for academic works may have some unwanted consequences such as free riding and hold out problem and may produce forum-shopping like phenomenon, i.e., migration of the academic papers from copyright free countries to countries having its protection, it might also raise serious concerns about the copyright of academic derivatives. Abolishing copyright may raise questions of fairness too, because the level of the efforts done by the authors and the positive externalities that they may not be able to recoup may punish and discourage positive externality producing sector of the society instead of encouraging them. At the end, given the voluntary nature of the intellectual property rights, I will propose that the choice here is not between maintaining the copyright for academic works or abolishing it, but the problem lies in striking a proper balance between individuals' incentive and public interest which might be 31