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Freakonomics: Does Copyright Make Books Disappear?

On the Freakonomics blog, Kaul Raustiala and Chris Sprigman (the latter mentioned here previously) discuss the phenomenon copyright suppression of some older works because of a combination of the orphan works problem and long copyright terms. This has been discussed here before at How long copyright terms make art disappear. The post is repixeled below.

Good for them for recognizing and publicizing this harm, but it is truly maddening to see one repeated unprincipled argument after another by pragmatists and utilitarians and economists. They simply seem unable to think in principled terms. They see the damage done by copyright law, and even highlight it, but never oppose it root and branch. They never want to abolish it. At most, it must be “reformed.” Bah.

Copyright law is poison, one of the worst travesties foisted on society by the fascist state; see:

For some real reform, abolish patent and copyright, or at least do something significant: see “How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law” (Feb. 1, 2011).

Here’s the post.

Does Copyright Make Books Disappear?

In a fascinating new paper (available on SSRN) by Paul Heald analyzes this second claim. Here is a snippet from the introduction. We’ve bolded the most striking part of the study:

Influential copyright lobbyists presently circle the globe advocating ever longer terms of copyright protection based on this under-exploitation hypothesis–that bad things happen when a copyright expires, the work loses its owner, and it falls into the public domain. By analyzing present distribution patterns of books and music, this article tests the assumption that works will be under-exploited unless they are owned and therefore questions the validity of arguments in favor of copyright term extension…

[Our research] collects data from a random selection of new editions for sale on www.amazon.com (“Amazon”) and music found on new movie DVD’s for sale on Amazon. By examining what is for sale “on the shelf,” the analysis of this data reveals a striking finding that directly contradicts the under-exploitation theory of copyright:Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability. Shortly after works are created and proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and lose their owners. For example, more than twice as many new books originally published in the 1890’s are for sale by Amazon than books from the 1950’s, despite the fact that many fewer books were published in the 1890’s.

For the average consumer, 19th century books are far easier to acquire than 20th century books. That’s compelling evidence against the claim that long copyright terms are necessary to ensure adequate distribution; in fact, Heald argues the opposite is true.

Heald’s findings speak to a disconnect between politics and economics in copyright law. There are clearly some 20th century works that are quite old (think Mickey Mouse), that have enduring commercial value, and for which their owners (think Disney) carefully study how best to exploit them in a 21st century market. But for the typical older work, no one is paying any attention because demand for the work in the market is low. Books from the 1940s, for instance, are very often out of print and while they may be available in some libraries and in the occasional well-stocked used book store; you or I would have a very hard time tracking one down for purchase.

An economically-rational copyright policy would balance these sorts of works against the very rare works that maintain high demand over long periods of time. Instead, our copyright policy in Congress is driven by the interests of copyright owners such as Disney, for whom longer terms are better and the best copyright term (for their own works, at least) is infinite. At their behest, copyright terms have grown longer and longer—now life of the author plus 70 years. Yet, as Heald suggests, availability to consumers has diminished.

Changing this dynamic is going to be hard. But what makes Heald’s study notable is that adds to the body of evidence suggesting that our intuitions about copyright—that it is essential for both creation and distribution—may have surprisingly weak empirical foundations. Whether this will change anything in Congress is another matter entirely. As one friend who worked in the Obama administration once said, “in Washington, logic is for losers.”

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To the extent possible under law, Stephan Kinsella has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to C4SIF. This work is published from: United States. In the event the CC0 license is unenforceable a  Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License is hereby granted.