Abstract

MARKET HIERARCHY, COPYRIGHT
AND FREE EXPRESSION IN AN AGE OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATION

Neil Weinstock Netanel

At the center of our understandings of political equality and democratic governance lies what might be termed the "Free Speech Principle," the idea that liberal democracy both depends upon and is largely manifested by "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate from "diverse and antagonistic sources. But absent preventative regulation, market hierarchy - the state of substantial inequality of wealth increasingly prevalent in Western democracies, particularly the U.S. - translates inevitably into what I Copyright, which today affords content providers unprecedented expansive control over uses of expressive works, exacerbates speech hierarchy. It does so against the background of media consolidation and ownership of exclusive rights to vast inventories of existing expression. Copyright promotes speech hierarchy both in the static sense (when prospective users are unable to obtain permission to use existing works) and the dynamic sense (by increasing the costs of expression for individuals and entities