Who Benefits from Copyright? The Evidence So Far and a Research Agenda

Copyright can encourage creative production by giving owners control over the use of a work, but the same control can make access and follow-on creation more costly. Assessing this tradeoff requires knowing how copyright revenue is distributed along the creative value chain and which economic decisions change as a result. We synthesize empirical evidence on creative labor, contracts and payments, investment by intermediaries, and the licensing and use of existing works. Historical and experimental evidence shows that expected rewards and additional resources can increase creative activity, although the response depends on the payment arrangement and the task. Contracts divide revenue and specify who supplies finance and services and who bears demand risk. Evidence that the share retained by intermediaries causes additional creative production remains limited. For existing works, fragmented ownership can obstruct licensing and the consolidation of complementary permissions can increase use, while creator control is associated with greater availability. Generative artificial intelligence makes the unresolved distributional question especially visible: the owners paid for access to existing material are not necessarily the creators whose future sales or commissions face competition. We develop a research agenda around three questions: who ultimately receives copyright revenue, whether additional income changes production, and how ownership affects access and reuse. Evidence on these relationships is needed to distinguish private returns from copyright's effects on social welfare.