DOJ Lawyer Explores 'Copyright Freeconomics'; Suggests Copyright Needs To Change | Tech... - 0 views
www.techdirt.com/...opyright-needs-to-change.shtml
lawyer copyright change John Newman newmediaorder business economics law legal intelectualProperty 2012
![](/images/link.gif)
-
Industry organizations have abandoned litigation efforts, and many copyright owners now compete directly with infringing products by offering licit content at a price of $0.
-
This sea change has ushered in an era of “copyright freeconomics.” Drawing on an emerging body of behavioral economics and consumer psychology literature, this Article demonstrates that, when faced with the “magic” of zero prices, the neoclassical economic model underpinning modern U.S. copyright law collapses. As a result, the shift to a freeconomic model raises fundamental questions that lie at the very heart of copyright law and theory. What should we now make of the established distinction between “use” and “ownership”? To what degree does the dichotomy separating “utilitarian” from “moral” rights remain intact? And — perhaps most importantly — has copyright’s ever-widening law/norm divide finally been stretched to its breaking point? Or can copyright law itself undergo a sufficiently radical transformation and avoid the risk of extinction through irrelevance?
-
The other interesting bit of the report is Newman's suggestion that an interesting proposal for changing copyright laws that might actually make traditional "maximalists" and "minimalists" both happy is to increase more moral rights for copyright -- and allow copyright holders to effectively choose if they want to enforce the "economic" rights to exclude by going after statutory damages, or, alternatively, enforce the "moral" rights to protect their reputation. His argument is that this might fit better with the nature of content creation today: