Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2019
Journal Title
Akron Law Review
ISSN
0002-371X
Abstract
This essay explores two possible copyright regimes. The first uses costless and perfect price discrimination to enable copyright owners to capture the full market or exchange value of their work. The second also uses costless and perfect price discrimination, but allows copyright owners to capture only the persuasion cost for authoring and distributing a work. We can call the first regime, costless copyright maximalism, and the second, costless copyright minimalism. The choice between these two regimes is primarily distributional: Should we design copyright to allocate the surplus associated with copyrighted works to copyright owners or to copyright consumers? This essay explores why this distributional choice matters and explains why copyright minimalism is the choice we should make.
First Page
987
Last Page
1016
Num Pages
30
Volume Number
53
Issue Number
4
Publisher
University of Akron School of Law
Recommended Citation
Glynn Lunney,
A Tale of Two Copyrights,
53
Akron L. Rev.
987
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1433