视版权为财产时我们会忽视什么

What We Don’t See When We See Copyright as Property

版权学者们认为我们过去为之抗争的所谓版权之战名义上是作者、创作者利益与读者、社会公众之间的利益冲突导致的,但是,现在我们愈发清楚这场战争根本不是这么一回事。相反,真正的冲突出现在二十世纪具有市场支配地位的出版商、唱片公司、电影公司以及其他中间商与作为二十一世纪版权市场强有力的参与者的数字服务商、平台之间。本文认为,至少有部分人主张二十世纪出版者与二十一世纪数字平台之间的冲突应当留待双方律师解决,而我们应当关注那些并未引起我们注意的问题。当版权学者致力于讨论究竟是作者利益还是读者利益至上时,很显然我们已经错过了研究这场版权战争中那些让人难以理解的问题的最佳时机。比如,所有论述都认为作者在版权体系中具有核心地位,但是,事实上版权法几乎没有赋予作者权力,也没有给予他们足够的金钱回报。相反,中间商拥有版权,并构建许可体系,以实现自身收益最大化,同时缩减支付给作者的报酬。对于这一点,版权学者的认识一贯十分肤浅。该原因在于法律人士理所当然地认为版权就是财产,财产权通过自由转让可以使受让人取得原权利人的地位。通过比较创设法定版权并将权利集中到出版商、印刷商手里的1710年英国安娜法令与对美国剥夺印第安人土地起着关键作用的1887年道斯法案,本文从中抽离出相一个相同的寓意,即若将某些事物归为可以自由转让的财产权的话,其结果往往会反映或者恶化财富与议价能力之间的悬殊差异,而有关财产权的法律信条极易让我们忽略这个结果。

It is becoming increasingly clear that the supposed copyright wars that copyright scholars believed we were fighting-nominally pitting the interests of authors and creators against the interests of readers and other members of the audience-were never really about that at all.Instead the real con flict has been between the publishers,record labels,movie studios,and other intermediaries who rose to market dominance in the 20th century,and the digital services and platforms that have become increasingly powerful copyright players in the 21st.In this essay,I argue that it would make good sense for at least some of us to leave the fight between 20th century publishers and 21st.century platforms to the many lawyers that represent both sides,and to focus on some of the issues that aren t as likely to attract their attention.While copyright scholars have been writing about whether authors‘interests or readers’interests should be paramount,we ve missed the opportunity to look more closely at the issues that the copyright wars obscured.Here is one:For all of the rhetoric about the central place of authors in the copyright scheme,our copyright laws in fact give them little power and less money.Intermediaries own the copyrights,and are able to structure licenses so as to maximize their own revenue while shrinking their pay-outs to authors.Copyright scholars have tended to treat this point superficially,because-as lawyers-we take for granted that copyrights are property;property rights are freely alienable;and the grantee of a property right stands in the shoes of the original holder.I compare the 1710 Statute of Anne,which created statutory copyrights and consolidated them in the hands of publishers and printers,with the 1887 Dawes Act,which served a crucial function in the American divestment of Indian land.I draw from the stories of the two laws the same moral:Constituting something as a freely alienable property right will almost always lead to results mirroring or exacerbating disparities in wealth and bargaining power.The legal dogma surrounding property rights makes it easy for us not to notice.