UCLA Entertainment Law Review

Copyright scholarship has long condemned the Copyright Term

Extension Act for failing to significantly increase authors' incentive to

create. Economic and psychological data combine to suggest that the

increased reward supplied by the twenty-year term extension is too

temporally distant to have any effect on individuals' decisions in the

present. However, a small body of empirical research suggests that

term extensions do lead directly to some increases in creative production.

This Comment explores one possible explanation for the discrepancy

between theory and practice by distinguishing individual authors

from creative firms. Individuals are subject to heuristics that diminish

their ability to forecast the future and reduce their valuation of the

term extension's reward Corporate decisions are not necessarily

guided by such heuristics; consequently, creative firms may be influenced

to produce works of art by different incentives than those that influence

individuals.

Term extensions may thus provide an incentive for corporate producers

even if their incentive effect for individuals is negligible. This

Comment argues that firms, which are more responsive to term extensions,

may be able to act as incentive intermediaries by passing along

the greater value of a longer-term copyright. Faced with a more valuable

copyright term, firms may either pay more for works up-front or

use the increased profitability to offer additional opportunities for individuals

to sell their works. There is limited evidence showing that

firms do act this way; instead, it appears that they keep any additional

profits as windfalls. As a result, society must decide whether incentivizing

firm authors is as valuable a benefit of legislation as incentivizing

individual authors.