| In the US Constitution, intellectual property rights are justified by a utilitarian argument. Authors and inventors receive property rights to their creations for a limited time as a incentive to release their creations to the public. Creators can then use their intellectual property rights to profit from their creative labor, and the public benefits from increased innovation. With the increasing importance of digital media, copyright owners have lobbied for stronger intellectual property rights, nominally to protect the interests of creators from piracy. Advocates for stronger copyright employ Neo-Lockean natural rights arguments that emphasize the creator's labor, but diminish the importance of the information commons. The resulting intellectual property system benefits creators at the cost of benefits to the public. To illustrate the problems caused by overly strong intellectual property rights, I invoke a Millian reading of the Incentives Argument that grounds American intellectual property law. Through Mill's emphasis on the importance of free expression, one can understand the expected benefits of creative works as tools for communication between individuals and commentary on shared culture. After offering a detailed Millian version of the Incentives Argument, I show that Mill's utilitarianism is capable of responding to criticisms commonly leveled at utilitarian accounts of intellectual property. In following chapters, I demonstrate the ways in which strong intellectual property rights inhibit free expression, focusing on the role derivative works can play as commentary or criticism of the culture. I end with an examination of the role of the information commons, the common stock of ideas, knowledge, and works, and how authors necessarily rely on the commons for the creation of new works. Reliance on the information commons imposes an obligation on the part of creators to contribute their works to the public domain, contrary to arguments from natural rights theorists. I conclude with an overview of an Incentives-Based model of intellectual property, emphasizing the importance of fair use and limited terms for ensuring that a proliferation of creative works will in fact benefit the public. |
