When you watch a show, listen to a song, or read a book, someone created it. It is only fair that they are compensated for their work – that is the foundational idea behind copyright.
However, the reality is far more complex. In the digital age, laws designed to protect creators can produce unintended – and socially undesirable – outcomes. At times, these rules end up benefiting those already at the top far more than those just starting out.
Copyright laws create winners and losers
In their paper The Economics of Copyright in the Digital Age, Christian Peukert and Margaritha Windisch synthesize the latest empirical evidence on the economics of intellectual property protection, revealing a nuanced picture: copyright laws and practices are not inherently neutral. Instead, they generate winners and losers, redistributing wealth and access in ways that deeply affect both artists and the public.
According to the authors, an artist’s market performance compared to that of another is not determined solely by differences in creative quality or marketing strategies behind it, but also by how intellectual property laws themselves unevenly impact creations. Consider this: two songs with equal hit potential can experience completely different fates based on how the rules of the digital game favor one over the other – a disparity often unrelated to talent or audience appeal.
Enforcement and the concentration of Revenue
Studies reviewed by the authors indicate that stricter anti-piracy enforcement yields no lasting positive effect on digital music or film revenues. However, shutting down file-sharing sites does not benefit all creators equally. During the Napster era in the early 2000s, hip-hop and electronic music artists leveraging remixes reached new audiences precisely through peer-to-peer file sharing.
The overarching takeaway is that stringent IP rules disproportionately favor “superstars” – a small fraction of individuals and, predominantly, corporate rightsholders and licensors. This reflects a broader market phenomenon: after a period of initial competition, a handful of dominant firms emerge to capture the bulk of market share (Rosen, 1981) and subsequently shape the drafting or preservation of the law itself.
In short, while anti-piracy measures are necessary and appear to protect the entire artistic community, in practice they can reinforce the dominant position of established players, rendering the market even more unequal for emerging artists. This does not mean the tool is not important or should not be used – far from it. Rather, it implies it underscores the need to design regulatory frameworks carefully to mitigate these unintended consequences.
The role of platforms and intermediaries in regulation
Another central theme addressed by Peukert and Windisch is the relationship between creators and digital platforms, focusing not only on how much value is generated, but on how that value is divided. This is no simple issue, particularly since plummeting costs of creation, distribution, and promotion, driven by technological advancement, have lowered barriers to entry to unprecedented levels, as documented by Waldfogel (2017), Wu and Zhu (2022), and Aguiar, Reimers, and Waldfogel (2024).
Consider music production or book publishing thirty years ago: artists required expensive studio time and a record label or publisher willing to back them. Today, streaming platforms host millions of artists, editing tools are ubiquitous, and platforms like Patreon enable creators to build “superfan” bases directly. For writers, e-books can be published at near-zero marginal cost without having to print thousands of copies before even knowing if anyone will read them. All this means that talents who would once be overlooked by industry gatekeepers – agents, labels, publishers – can now reach audiences directly. The active creator population has never been larger.
Yet this explosion of creators complicates the copyright equation. Copyright frameworks were originally designed to incentivize individuals devoting their lives to creation. Today, with a vast spectrum of creators, ranging from professionals to amateurs and everything in between, designing a one-size-fits-all rule becomes increasingly difficult. In practice, a law designed to protect rights may end up entrenching the privileges of catalog-holding conglomerates while raising barriers for new entrants.
And who, after all, are the creators of the 21st century?
A critical yet under-explored frontier of research is the sociodemographic diversity of creators. Copyright laws do not operate in a vacuum; they interact with existing social structures, including gender disparities (Peukert and Windisch, 2025).
Analyzing 14,598,621 valid copyright registrations in the United States between 1978 and 2012, Brauneis and Oliar (2016) found a predominantly male authorship, with men accounting for two-thirds of all authors. Although the proportion of male authors systematically declined over time (from roughly 70% in 1978 to about 64% in 2012), much remains to be done on this front.
Importantly, this gender imbalance varies across creative fields: Visual Arts (54.34% male), Text (57.45% male), Music (75.98% male), Film (78.16% male), and Software (88.22% male). Disparities also extend to racial representation, with white creators overrepresented in film and software registrations, while Black and Hispanic creators remain underrepresented in these sectors.
In Brazil, comprehensive demographic data remains scarce. However, a 2024 study by ECAD revealed that women represented only 6% of the top 100 highest-earning copyright royalty recipients in the country.
Conclusion: Looking out for everyone
The economics of copyright in the digital age is far from a simple story. Policies governing enforcement, regulation, and protection extension act as wealth redistribution mechanisms, leading to outcomes that are not always positive for artists, consumers, or society at large.
This does not mean copyright frameworks shouldn’t exist – quite the contrary. It highlights the imperative to foster greater diversity and equity within cultural production systems, and the formation of social meaning, a domain in which copyright protection plays a pivotal role.
This is precisely where regulation comes in: preventing further inequality among creators while safeguarding public welfare. The primary challenge for the future lies in shaping copyright rules that do not merely protect rights, but actively foster a fair, diverse, and accessible creative ecosystem for all.
References
Aguiar, L., Reimers, I., & Waldfogel, J. (2024). Platforms and the transformation of the content industries. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 33(2), 317-326.
Brauneis, R., & Oliar, D. (2016). Copyright’s Race, Gender and Age: A First Quantitative Look at Registrations. GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper, (2016-48).
Peukert, C., & Windisch, M. (2025). The economics of copyright in the digital age. Journal of Economic Surveys, 39(3), 877-903.
Rosen, S. (1981). The economics of superstars. The American Economic Review, 71(5), 845-858.
Waldfogel, J. (2017). How digitization has created a golden age of music, movies, books, and television. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(3), 195-214.
Wu, Y., & Zhu, F. (2022). Competition, contracts, and creativity: Evidence from novel writing in a platform market. Management Science, 68(12), 8613-8634.
