The effects of copyright law on the supply of creative work : new evidence from the United States sound recording industry

While copyright law extensions have often been seen as having significant impacts towards the supply of creative work, the importance of economic factors should also be considered as they still play a crucial role in the United States sound recording industry. This paper thus investigates the issue of the implementation of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act as well as economic incentives towards the supply of new creative sound recording work in the U.S. context. Our empirical analysis considers a time-series dataset covering a period of 18 years from 1990-2007 to represent the supply of the U.S. commercial sound recordings. The dataset is extracted and compiled from third party sources, namely the U.S. Copyright Office and the CEIC database. The empirical evidence indicates that although the copyright law extension is found to have a positive impact on the supply of sound recordings, it is statistically insignificant. Conversely, other economic factors, the amount of money spent on audio and visual equipment in particular, appears to have a more significant impact on the supply of sound recordings. This leads us to conclude that economic incentives may have a more significant impact than copyright law extensions in influencing the U.S. supply of creative sound recordings.Bachelor of Art