OF COASE AND COMICS, OR, THE COMEDY OF COPYRIGHT

Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman’s There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy is one of a small number of recent case studies that supply relevant data. The major virtue of this work is that it does for the premise of A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Virginia law review 2009-01, Vol.95, p.27
Main Author: Madison, Michael J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comedians
Copyright
Intellectual property
Norms
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman’s There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy is one of a small number of recent case studies that supply relevant data. The major virtue of this work is that it does for the premise of Anglo-American intellectual property law what Ellickson did for Coase. It moves the discussion from theory to practice. Does intellectual property law supply incentives to produce and distribute creative goods? In some salient contexts, the answer is "no" or, at least, "not so much." Oliar and Sprigman argue that stand-up comedians are creative and productive folks who live by a system of social norms, rather than by a system of intellectual property law. Not only does this comic code encourage creativity, it also apparently has something to do with comedy itself.
ISSN:1942-9967