ABSTRACT
I have argued in other places (Macmillan, 1998; Macmillan, 2002a; Macmillan, 2002b) that copyright's relationship to the concepts of creativity and culture, with which it is often rhetorically associated (Waldron, 1993, p 853), is most accurately viewed as an instrumental rather than a fundamental one. 1 In other words, rather than encouraging and protecting cultural output on the basis that it has a fundamental and non-economic value as an expression of human creativity, copyright has been well used as an instrument for promoting trade in the cultural output that comes within its purview. Thus, copyright deals with works in relation to which it subsists as products or commodities, the importance of which is reflected in their impact on trade rather than in any non-economic value they may enjoy One of the best examples of this type of approach to copyright (and to intellectual property as a whole) arose in the context of the negotiation and conclusion of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPs Agreement).
