From Volume 76, Number 5 (July 2003)
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The main argument presented in this Article is that the harms and social costs of copyright cannot be summarized just in terms of enclosure and exclusion. Copyright law, I will argue, also has a silencing effect toward noninfringing creative materials of other independent creators and producers.
Recent scholarly work has emphasized copyright’s “dynamic effect,” that is, the ongoing influence of expansive copyright protection toward an enclosure of the creative commons, and diminishment of cultural diversity. On the whole, however, this broad approach regarding the social cost of copyright in terms of diversity has focused only on instances and frameworks of creative activity in which a secondary author wishes to make use of existing copyrighted material, while a copyright owner (often a media conglomerate) imposes obstacles and limitations against such a use.
The argument presented in this Article goes one step further in exploring the nexus of copyright and diversity. As I will show, an expanded copyright regime diminishes diversity in a more intrusive manner. Extensive copyright protection also has a chilling effect on the variety and diversity of creative works that are both noninfringing and not affiliated to copyright portfolios, or to the communicative activity, of commercialized corporate media. This outcome derives from the advantages extensive copyright protection affords to excessive exposure of corporate media’s creative materials, as well as to the economic and cultural dominance of these media products.
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