Abstract
The standard theory of copyright law imagines a marketplace efficiently serving up new works to an undifferentiated world of consumers. Yet the reality is that all consumers are not equal. Class and culture combine to explain who wins, and who loses, from copyright protection. Along the dimension of class, the inequality insight reminds us just because new works are created does not mean that most people can afford them, and calls for new attention to problems of affordability. Copyright protection inflates the price of books, with implications for distributive justice, democratic culture, and economic efficiency. Along the dimension of culture, the inequality insight points out that it is not enough for copyright theory to speak generally of new works; it matters crucially what languages those works are being created in. Copyright protection is likely to be an ineffective incentive system for the production of works in “neglected languages” spoken predominantly by poor people. This Article highlights and explores these relationships between copyright and social inequality, offering a new perspective on what is at stake in debates over copyright reform.
Highlights
The standard theory of copyright law imagines a marketplace efficiently serving up new works to an undifferentiated world of consumers
AFF. 609 (1986); Kwesi Kwaa Prah, The Difficulties of Publishing in Africa: Random Thoughts on the Casas Publishing Experience, in LANGUAGE AND POWER: THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANGUAGE FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT 301, 301 (Birgit Bock-Utne & Gunnar Garbo eds., 2009) (“In Africa today, there is what is [commonly] described . . . as a ‘book famine,’ that is a shortage of books, the pricing of books out of the financial reach of most people or the sheer unavailability of books.”); Peter Ripken, African Literature in the Literary Market Place Outside Africa, 17 AFR
A common complaint among South African publishers is that South Africa lacks “a reading culture.”[55]. The claim is typically asserted without
Summary
South Africa’s long struggle against racial apartheid is well known. formal discrimination is overcome, its legacy lingers. The second and larger nation of South Africa is black and poor, with the worst-affected being women in the rural areas, the black rural population in general and the disabled This nation lives under conditions of grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure. The most widely spoken languages in South Africa are: Zulu (23%), Xhosa (16%), Afrikaans (13%), and English (10%), followed by the less populous African languages.[31] Both the economic and linguistic dimensions of social inequality play a significant role in shaping access to reading material
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