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New Scholarship: America the Pirate
Posted by Steven Wu on Tuesday, February 03 @ 22:15:55 EST Copyright
Professor B. Zorina Khan has posted a paper entitled "Does Copyright Piracy Pay? The Effects of U.S. International Copyright Laws on the Market for Books, 1790-1920," examining a century of American history when domestic copyright laws placed all foreign works in the public domain. From the abstract:
Does the lack of international copyrights benefit or harm developing countries? I examine the effects of U.S. copyright piracy during a period when the U.S. was itself a developing country. U.S. statutes since 1790 protected the copyrights of American citizens, but until 1891 deemed the works of foreign citizens to be in the public domain. In 1891, the laws were changed to allow foreigners to obtain copyright protection in the United States if certain conditions were met. Thus, this episode in American history provides us with a convenient way of investigating the consequences of international copyright piracy. My analysis is based on copyright registrations, information on authors, book titles and prices, financial data from the accounts of a major publishing company, and lawsuits regarding copyright questions. These data are used to investigate the welfare effects of widespread infringement of foreign works on American publishers, writers, and the public. The results suggest that the United States benefited from piracy and that the choice of copyright regime was endogenous to the level of economic development.
The fact that many of the most IP-crazy nations today (e.g., the US and some of the rest of the developed world) benefited so extensively from IP piracy earlier in their history has been a source of major controversy. Particularly poignant is the argument by many developing nations that they cannot get necessary medicines without looser IP restrictions; they argue, justifiably I think, that they should be allowed to benefit from IP piracy to the same extent that the developed countries did.
 
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Fair (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, February 04 @ 06:06:36 EST
...they argue, justifiably I think, that they should be allowed to benefit from IP piracy to the same extent that the developed countries did. That sounds like an argument based on a principle of fairness. I don't expect it would hold much weight with the corporate and political leaders that get to say what goes. It's way too easy to ignore the antics of ones ancestors, especially when money is at stake. Still, I'll bear it in mind, next time some American CEO calls copyright violation "theft", that the USA was (by that definition) a nation of remorseless thieves in the century spanning 1790 to 1890+.


[ Reply to This ]

  • Re: Fair by JimCYL on Wednesday, February 04 @ 17:03:52 EST
  • Re: Fair by Anonymous on Wednesday, February 04 @ 22:52:19 EST
    • Re: Fair by Anonymous on Monday, February 09 @ 11:17:36 EST

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