Niva Elkin-Koren · September 2011
79 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1712 (2011)
Back in the 1970s, Justice Stephen Breyer, then a law professor at Harvard Law School, questioned the economic justification for granting copyrights to publishers. In his seminal article, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, Breyer argued that copyright must be justified in a particular economic context and that technological changes may alter economic conditions, thus demanding a different legal policy. Breyer’s article is an invitation to challenge the necessity of copyright in a changing technological environment. This article applies Breyer’s approach to digital publishing and questions the wisdom and legitimacy of granting copyright to publishers as the book market enters the digital age.
