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On October 10, 2019, Professor Ruth Okediji Delivered the 8th Annual Peter A. Jaszi Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property. Her lecture addressed The Unfinished Business of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions.  

Professor Okediji called for a new paradigm of thinking about the relationship between copyright and the public interest. “The excesses of the copyright system cannot be remedied by limitations and exceptions alone,” she exclaimed. 

The lecture warned that it is important to not make limitations and exceptions like copyright – following a one size fits all pattern. There is a tendency for limitations and exceptions to be reactive. Every exception responds to the creation of new rights and is primarily justified in economic incentive terms. The incentive rationale places a limit on public rights in our legal imagination. In the process, she argues, we have given up other avenues to cabin copyright excess that serve a broader set of values. “We don’t have a copyright story to tell for the diverse modes of creativity that do not have markets,” she explained. 

“The limitation of copyright analysis to the incentive effect is truly blasphemous. . . . The role of libraries, museums and archives should not be on the same side of the ledger as economic incentives. Balance is not the goal. We need a copyright system that is not just for markets.”