The true impact of shorter and longer copyright durations: from authors’ earnings to cultural creativity and diversity

In the mainstream, there has been a strong advocacy to prolong copyright duration. This makes it an important task to rigorously examine if a longer copyright duration is helpful in guaranteeing the earnings of authors from their works as well as the promotion of cultural creativity and diversity. In contrast to many previous studies that have been rooted in law-based perspectives, this paper addresses these issues by adopting a business and economic analysis. By exploring the true impact of different copyright durations, this paper scrutinizes why a longer duration does not improve the author’s earnings, and in fact, impedes cultural creativity and diversity. As a solution, this paper proposes to shorten the copyright duration and analyzes why this is likely to increase the earnings of authors from their works and to enhance cultural diversity and creativity. This study provides a complementary asset to understand more clearly copyrights and its effects.