| Sumario: | The writer argues that it is highly likely that new insights into the economics of copyright can be gained from actually observing the production of intellectual property that is not copyrighted, using as an example games of chess, for which there is no copyright and for which game scores can be reprinted without the players' permission and without compensation. There are three reasons why chess works well without copyright and why market performance probably would not improve much if it were introduced. First, game scores are a by-product, and the elasticity of supply with regard to earnings is therefore low. Second, the perception of the quality with regard to chess players depends on ranking, and copyright cannot augment the number of top ten players. Finally, copyright would even give rise to certain quality disincentives. The writer contends that to a certain extent, these arguments would also hold for other art forms that are usually presumed to work only because of the existence of copyright.
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