The Effects of Copyright on Innovation

Associate law professor, Michael A. Carrier, looks at the effects of copyright on innovation, with a particular emphasis on digital music.

Copyright has an innovation problem. Judicial decisions, private enforcement, and public dialogue ignore innovation and overemphasize the harms of copyright infringement….The article also steps back to look at copyright litigation more generally. It demonstrates the debilitating effects of lawsuits and statutory damages. It gives numerous examples, in the innovators’ own words, of the effects of personal liability. It traces the possibilities of what we have lost from the Napster decision and from copyright litigation generally. And it points to losses to innovation, venture capital, markets, licensing, and the “magic” of music.

Carrier’s law review article is forthcoming at the Wisconsin Law Review, and may be downloaded here. Thanks to our friend, Ruben Verdu, for the heads up on this one.

Tags: Copyright, damages, innovation, intellectual property, Litigation, music, napster, peer-to-peer (p2p), PIPA, piracy, sopa, statutory damages, theft, venture capital