Law Commons^™

Seventeen Famous Economists Weigh In On Copyright: The Role Of Theory, Empirics, And Network Effects, Stan Liebowitz, Stephen Margolis

ExpressO

The case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, which sought to have the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA, aka Sonny Bono Copyright Act) declared unconstitutional, was recently decided by the Supreme Court. A remarkable group of seventeen economists including five Noble laureates, representing a wide spectrum of opinion in economics, submitted an amicus curie brief in support of Eldred. The economists condemned CTEA on the grounds that the revenues earned during the extension are so heavily discounted that they have almost no value, while the extended protection of aged works creates immediate monopoly deadweight losses and increases the costs of creating new …

Virtual Markets For Virtual Goods: The Mirror Image Of Digital Copyright?, Peter D. Eckersley

ExpressO

The Internet and Copyright Law are particularly ill-suited to each other. One is designed to give as much information as possible to everyone who wants it; the other allows authors, artists and publishers to earn money by restricting the distribution of works made out of information. The beneficiaries of copyright law are lobbying for the re-design of computers and the Internet to instate "content control" and "digital rights management" (DRM). These technologies are intended to make copyright workable again by re-imposing limits on access to information goods, but they carry high direct and indirect social costs.

One alternative, which has …