Copyright's Communications Policy

89 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2004

See all articles by Tim Wu

Tim Wu

Columbia University - Law School

Abstract

This paper suggest that the main challenges for 21st century copyright are not challenges of authorship policy, but rather new and harder problems for copyright's communications policy. Since its inception copyright has set important baselines upon which publishers and their modern equivalents compete.business. As the pace of technological change accelerates, copyright's role in setting the conditions for competition is quickly becoming more important, even challenging for primacy the significance of copyright's encouragement of authorship.

The study of copyright's communications policy has both a descriptive and a normative payoff. First, it helps us understand both the existing copyright code and the history of 20th century copyright. Second, it helps us ask whether copyright is in line with other important goals of national communications policy.

Keywords: copyright, communications, telecommunications, authorship, compulsory licensing, public choice, vertical foreclosure, new institutional economics, legal history

Suggested Citation

Wu, Tim, Copyright's Communications Policy. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=532882

Tim Wu (Contact Author)

Columbia University - Law School ( email )

435 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10025
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
6,070
Abstract Views
46,692
Rank
2,385
PlumX Metrics