Note: This post was cross-posted at the CATO Unbound on 2/1/2013. The January 2013 issue of CATO Unbound feature a debate on copyright reform, Opportunities for Copyright Reform This post responds to the discussion in that issue, but it also stands alone as a critique of copyright reform proposals that favor to consider the importance of creators.
One of my biggest questions after reviewing the other responses as well as the lead essay is this: “Where are the creators?” The copyright policy debate is often rather vague on certain key points. Amid the discussion of weighing and balancing interests, “corporate welfare,” and tragic obstacles to remix culture, there is a notable silence.
Too often, the modern copyright debate overlooks the fact that copyright concerns creative works made by real people, and that the creation and commercialization of these works requires entrepreneurial risk taking. A debate that overlooks these facts is factually, morally, and economically deficient. Any reform that arises from such a context is likely to be both unjust and economically harmful.
I am genuinely puzzled when copyright discussions treat creative works as if they were a pre-existing resource that the government arbitrarily allocates. They are not. They aren’t an imaginary regulatory entitlement, such as pollution credits. They aren’t leases or mineral rights on public land handed out to political cronies. Creative works are, instead, the productive intellectual labor of private parties. Real people make this stuff.
At this point in the discussion, a common rhetorical move is to reject what some scholars describe as the romantic myth of authorship. Copyright skeptics point out that authors build on the work of others and that many creative works are the work of corporations, not individuals. This argument was provoked by many decades—a couple centuries, really—of rhetoric that put the individual author on a pedestal. Even if one concedes that authors have, perhaps, been idealized, taking them for granted goes too far.