A welcome addition to the literature on the economics of copyright

Abstract

This section is dedicated to the review of ideas, articles, books, films and other media. It will include replies (and rejoinders) to articles, the evaluation of new ideas or proposals, and reviews of books and articles both directly and indirectly related to intellectual property law. Although there were some early pioneers of the study of the economics of copyright, such as Arnold Plant, the subject only really began to develop in the 1980s. Now there is a substantial literature on the subject, and it is of increasing importance. As this collection reveals, the subject is a multi-faceted one. I would divide it into three main branches. The first is the study of copyright markets: analysis of the functioning of markets in subject matter protected by copyright (and related rights, such as performers' rights). This includes such matters as the earnings of authors, the impact of infringement and the efficiency of collecting licensing. Practitioners in this branch face huge difficulties in obtaining data for analysis, but persistent efforts have enabled some useful work to be done. The second main branch is the study of copyright law from an economic perspective: what are the economic consequences of such matters as copyright term and copyright scope? Much of the past work in this branch has focused on term, including term extensions, but practitioners are now starting to look at the harder question of scope, such as the effect of particular limitations and exceptions. The third main branch is the study of copyright policy from an economic perspective: how, informed by an economic understanding of copyright, should we frame legislation? Much of this work is concerned with the purposes of conferring copyright protection, and involves trying to understand how those purposes are served, or disserved, by particular policies. The first branch is largely empirical, while the other two are more theoretical.