Law Commons^™

On Copyright's Authorship Policy, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Making authors the masters of their own destiny has long been a stated aspiration of copyright. Yet more often than not, the real subjects of American copyright are distributors – book publishers, record labels, broadcasters, and others – who control the rights, bring the lawsuits, and take copyright as their "life-sustaining protection." Much of modern American copyright history, and particularly its legislative history, revolves on distributors either demanding more industry protection or fighting amongst themselves. It is distributors who make the great financial investments in copyrighted works, and distributors who arguably most need the incentives and protections that the system …