Yes, Copyright Helps Creators

http://www.copyhype.com/2013/11/yes-copyright-helps-creators/

November 25, 2013 · Terry Hart

On November 19, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), released its latest report that shows the value added by copyright industries each year to the US economy. This was the 14th such report IIPA has released since 1990, and for the first time, core copyright industries1 contributed over one trillion dollars.

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Since 2002, WIPO has supported and collected reports on the economic contributions of copyright industries in nearly forty countries around the world. Last year, it released a report, WIPO Studies on the Economic Contribution of the Copyright Industries, that analyzed and compared the data from these reports.

One of the things WIPO looked at was how the economic contributions of copyright industries in countries related to those countries rankings on the International Intellectual Property Index, a study prepared by the Property Rights Alliance (PRA) that looks at data from 129 countries.

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WIPO’s conclusion: “The analysis suggests a strong and positive relationship that exists between the contribution of copyright industries to GDP and the IPR Index.” That is, copyright industries contribute more to a country’s GDP when they are better protected.

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Part of the misunderstanding of the logic of copyright may come from the focus of skeptics on only the incentive to create, to the exclusion of the incentive to disseminate.

[Very true. I have written loads of songs that get compliments at open mics but I can't afford to record them. It has cost me a lot of money to get a few recorded. I know excellent singer/songwriters who have bought out one CD. Their fans would love more, but it costs a lot of money to produce a good music CD, and most never make up the cost of the first one.
If you want to see some of my music, go to http://www.reverbnation.com/patriciashannon ]

Supreme Court has been clear this is not the case:

Nothing in the text of the Copyright Clause confines the “Progress of Science” exclusively to “incentives for creation.” Evidence from the founding, moreover, suggests that inducing dissemination—as opposed to creation—was viewed as an appropriate means to promote science. Until 1976, in fact, Congress made “federal copyright contingent on publication[,] [thereby] providing incentives not primarily for creation,” but for dissemination. Our decisions correspondingly recognize that “copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.”

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for intellectual property; the value to society consists in the existence of a market for the authors’ writings. The money paid to the author is by no means secondary. Rather, it is the unavoidable result of the creation of a market because a market cannot exist without the promise of reward to owners of property who choose to place that property on the market

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