05 October 2016

Copyright as Distributive Justice

'Copyright and Distributive Justice' by Justin Hughes and Robert P. Merges in (2016) 92 Notre Dame Law Review comments 
 When concerns about copyright’s effect on distributive justice are raised those concerns typically focus on access to information. Most of these discussions assume that by conferring control over access to copyrighted works, copyright in general concentrates wealth with corporations and a few individuals. This article takes a different perspective, proposing that copyright has been and remains an important tool for wealth distribution to a large and diverse group of individual creators. Our focus is not on the distribution of copyrighted works – who controls them and who has access to them. Instead, we concentrate on the distribution of income that flows from sales of copyrighted works. The income streams created by copyright, we argue, constitute another of copyright's contributions to distributive justice. Using a Rawlsian framework for distributive justice, we consider – both theoretically and empirically – how copyright law allows individuals to earn income and build wealth. We provide a sketch of Rawls’ theoretical structure for distributive justice, including a detailed look at Rawls’ canonical “Difference Principle.”
With Rawls’ framework in the background, we first show that copyright contributes vitally to the incomes of average-earning creative professionals (with a focus on the music industry). Second, we argue that copyright is a uniquely effective institution in providing “equality of opportunity” in wealth accumulation. In this regard, we propose that copyright has been central to whatever limited “equality of opportunity” African-Americans have enjoyed in the United States. Indeed, for the wealthiest African-Americans, copyright has been the most important form of property for social and economic advancement. This is so, we argue, because copyright is one of the few social institutions that permit a person to turn labor directly into economic assets (in the form of copyrighted works), and hence to create real, sustainable wealth starting only with personal labor. This, we conclude, is an important dimension of copyright’s role in overall distributive justice.
The authors conclude -
The dominant discourse in copyright scholarship has treated creative individuals only as a means to an end: generation of original expression. When scholars have expressed any concern at all about distributive justice, it has been only about fair access to information and material, in other words, as a bookend to the dominant utilitarian analysis. But when we turn our attention away from considerations of fair access to works, and to- ward considerations of a fair distribution of income and wealth, we come to see a neglected side of copyright. Our main point throughout has been this: from the limited evidence available, the copyright system appears to contribute positively and significantly to economic distributive justice in the U.S. economy.
Using the framework of John Rawls’ principles of justice, we have explored how copyright increases the income of middle tier members of society who are trying to support themselves in creative professions, professions we all – everyone from politicians to law professors – laud as part of the desirable ‘information economy’ future. We have also reviewed mechanisms in existing copyright law – from minor procedural speed bumps to termination of transfer – that show copyright’s orientation to protect the prospects of creative individuals. We have also discussed other tools in the copyright toolbox to improve the distributive footprint left by copyright, including droit de suite for artists and equitable remuneration mechanisms used in other developed economies.
Another requirement of Rawlsian distributive justice is that all individuals have fair equality of opportunity for all “offices and positions.” There is no question that American society as a whole has failed to provide such equality of opportunity for women and minorities, particularly for African-Americans. In that context, copyright has been a rare if not unique institution providing opportunity for African-Americans to achieve the greatest economic success: the list of the wealthiest black citizens of the U.S. is utterly dominated by people whose fortunes are rooted in the copyright industries: entertainment, music, sports, publishing, and the like. Given the massive economic barriers facing the African-American community generally, this is a striking realization. Not that copyright in itself is an effective anti-poverty program; not that it offsets structural racism in its myriad forms. Our point here is simply that copyright has been uniquely effective in permitting African-Americans something closer to fair equality of opportunity to achieve the highest levels of wealth.
In the end, our argument is simple: copyright, though a form of property, does not only or disproportionately reward large corporate interests. Copyright is, and can be, an important tool to promote a just distribution of income and wealth in society.
This has political as well as economic ramifications. The historian and biographer A.N. Wilson wrote in the 1980s that “[p]roperty never has been abolished and never will be abolished. It is simply a question of who has it. And the fairest system ever devised is one by which all, rather than none, [are] property owners.” That sentiment certainly comports with the vision of the Framers of the American Republic. These were individuals who saw property ownership as a bulwark against tyranny and a mechanism to advance the individual. The little dollop of economic power copyright confers helps creative people support themselves and a thriving creative class feeds our culture and ultimately our polity. In helping distribute income to creative individuals and supporting them as a professional class, copyright forms part of a thriving democratic republic and a just society