Preview
Creation Date
3-26-2021
Description
Professor Justin Hughes and Robert Merges' article Copyright and Distributive Justice proposes that copyright has been and remains an important tool for wealth distribution to a large and diverse group of individual creators. Focusing on the distribution of income that flows from sales of copyrighted works, the authors argue that the income streams created by copyright constitute another of copyright's contributions to distributive justice. As a result, the authors propose that copyright has been central to whatever limited "equality of opportunity" African-Americans have enjoyed in the United States. Indeed, for the wealthiest African-Americans, copyright has been the most important farm of property for social and economic advancement as one of the few social institutions that permit a person to turn labor directly into economic assets. Join us for this lecture with Professor Hughes as he presents this work in light of contemporary conversations about the relationship between race and copyright law.