Washington University Law Review Volume 92 Issue 1 2014 Copyright and Inequality Lea Shaver Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Lea Shaver, Copyright and Inequality, 92 WASH. U. L. REV. 117 (2014). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol92/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. COPYRIGHT AND INEQUALITY LEA SHAVER ABSTRACT The standard theory of copyright law imagines a marketplace efficiently serving up new works to an undifferentiated world of consumers. Yet the reality is that all consumers are not equal. Class and culture combine to explain who wins, and who loses, from copyright protection. Along the dimension of class, the inequality insight reminds us just because new works are created does not mean that most people can afford them, and calls for new attention to problems of affordability. Copyright protection inflates the price of books, with implications for distributive justice, democratic culture, and economic efficiency. Along the dimension of culture, the inequality insight points out that it is not enough for copyright theory to speak generally of new works; it matters crucially what languages those works are being created in. Copyright protection is likely to be an ineffective incentive system for the production of works in “neglected languages” spoken predominantly by poor people.