1 1 If we redesigned copyright from scratch, what might it look like? Rebecca Giblin and Kimberlee Weatherall What if we could start with a blank slate, and write ourselves a brand new copyright system? If we could scrap the existing structure entirely and design a law to encourage creativity, remunerate and support creators, and increase the size of cultural markets to ensure broad access to new knowledge and creativity; in short, if we could draw up a new copyright law that genuinely furthered the public interest, what might it look like? Would we opt for radical overhaul? Or would we keep our current fundamentals? What parts of the system would we jettison? What would we keep? Most critical and academic commentary on copyright takes current law as a given. 1 Not uncommonly, commentators lament the way that the current copyright system was conceived in very different technological and economic conditions, and built on foundations that 1 This is true even of projects that aim to rethink the copyright system: e.g. Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright (Prometheus Books, 2 nd ed, 2006); Pamela Samuelson, ‘The Copyright Principles Project’ (2010) 25 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1175. The explicit goal of the Copyright Principles project was to ‘improve’ and ‘refine’ copyright law by seeking to explore the level of possible ‘consensus’: Samuelson at 1175, 1176. Another project along similar lines was the Wittem Project, which aimed to develop a model copyright law designed to operate within the international obligations of the European Union (and thus be consistent with both the Berne Convention and TRIPS (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, opened for signature 9 September 1886 (amended in 1914, 1928, 1948, 1967, 1971, and 1979) 25 UST 1341, 828 UNTS 221, entered into force 5 December 1887; and Marrakesh Agreement Establishing