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Page Number: 65.0

20 

GOLAN v. HOLDER 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

copyright  protection  of  already  existing  works  can  help,
say,  music  publishers  or  film  distributers  raise  prices, 
produce  extra  profits  and  consequently  lead  them  to  pub­
lish  or  distribute  works  they  might  otherwise  have  ig­
nored.  But ordinarily a copyright—since it is a monopoly
on  copying—restricts  dissemination  of  a  work  once  pro­
duced  compared  to  a  competitive  market.    And  simply
making the industry richer does not mean that the indus­
try,  when it makes an ordinary forward-looking economic 
calculus,  will  distribute  works  not  previously  distributed.
The  industry  experts  might  mean  that  temporary  extra
profits  will  lead  them  to  invest  in  the  development  of  a
market,  say,  by  advertising.    But  this  kind  of  argument,
which  can  be  made  by  distributers  of  all  sorts  of  goods, 
ranging  from  kiwi  fruit  to  Swedish  furniture,  has  little 
if  anything  to  do  with  the  nonrepeatable  costs  of  initial 
creation,  which  is  the  special  concern  of  copyright  protec­
tion.  See supra, at 2–3. 

Moreover, the argument proves too much.  It is the kind 
of  argument  that  the  Stationers’  Company  might  well
have made and which the British Parliament rejected.  Cf. 
Patterson  154–155  (describing  failed  booksellers’  bill 
seeking  protection  from  foreign  competition  through  an 
extension  of  the  copyright  term).    It  is  the  kind  of  argu­
ment  that  could  justify  a  legislature’s  withdrawing  from
the public domain the works, say, of Hawthorne or of Swift 
or  for  that  matter  the  King  James  Bible  in  order  to  en­
courage  further  publication  of  those  works;  and,  it  could 
even more easily justify similar action in the case of lesser 
known early works, perhaps those of the Venerable Bede. 
The  Court  has  not,  to  my  knowledge,  previously  accepted 
such  a  rationale—a  rationale  well  removed  from  the  spe­
cial economic circumstances that surround the nonrepeat­
able costs of the initial creation of a “Writing.”  Supra, at 
2.  And  I  fear  that  doing  so  would  read  the  Copyright
Clause  as  if  it  were  a  blank  check  made  out  in  favor  of