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The Internet, Creativity and Copyright Incentives

The copyright industries savour their role as critical intermediaries in the copyright supply chain. To this end they are continually seeking to strengthen their legal entitlements by arguing that stronger copyright incentives fuel future creative action. But the reality of creativity is different from the linear economic reward/action relationship that these industries promote. This reality has been brought into sharp focus by the seemingly limitless creativity that the internet has unleashed. Much of this creativity occurs without reference to the incentive structure provided by copyright law and demonstrates the potential redundancy of several existing industry functions. The result has been a seemingly intractable tension between established industries and emergent modes of production and dissemination. The clearest examples of this tension are the current debates over the utility of peer-to-peer technology and the competition between proprietary and open source software development models. This tension, and the realities of creativity that underpin it, are the subject of this article. A diverse range of creative experiments facilitated by digital networked technology are considered and used as a backdrop to a general discussion on some of the areas where reforms to copyright's existing incentive structure are most needed.