Over at Madisonian.net, Frank Pasquale has a post entitled Egalitarian Copyright (Part 1): A New Control/Access Tradeoff. Here is a taste:
To an egalitarian, the fundamental injustice arising out of the current copyright system is the denial of access to works to people who can’t afford the licensing fee. For example, somebody in the U.S. who makes $15,000 a year, and does not own their home or other sizable assets, simply cannot (or should not) be buying too many $18 CD’s or $1 MP3’s. (The point applies a fortiori in less developed countries.) And yet their enjoyment of the music would come at the expense of no one—consumption is entirely nonrivalrous in our digital age, and arguably increases the popularity (and thus value) of the consumed item.
Of course, some egalitarians do see it this way, but I should like to add two qualifications:
First, although Pasquale is essentially corect about nonrivalrous consumption, this does not entail that there is an alternative scheme that would provide such access without imposing other costs. A system that attempted to provide free access to low-income consumers might create intractable administrative problems or undermine enforcement against those who are willing to pay.
Second, there is an important theoretical debate among egalitarians about the question whether egalitarian principles of distributive justice are properly applied to anything other than the basic structure. Correspondingly, there is a question whether the solution to inequality should be targeted at particular contexts, copyright, contract, etc., or whether the solution is a fair distribution of wealth and income.
Interesting post by Pasquale!