Law Commons^™

An Inquiry Into The Merits Of Copyright: The Challenges Of Consistency, Consent And Encouragement Theory, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Hostility to copyright has a long and honorable history. In the nineteenth century, for example, Lord Macaulay argued that while copyright might be necessary to ensure a "supply of good books," the monopoly that it imposed was at best a necessary evil.

"For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought
not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good."

A number of studies critical of intellectual property followed in our century. The most well known is probably the economically oriented 1970 study by Stephen Breyer …