‘Creativity for the public good’: reframing copyright law reform in New Zealand

Abstract In Alalääkkölä v Palmer, the Court of Appeal articulated a key function of copyright law in New Zealand as stimulating artistic creativity for the public good. The uncertain status of New Zealand’s Copyright Act Review and the new challenges posed by generative artificial intelligence make it an appropriate time to re-consider the role of that core aim in New Zealand copyright policy. To that end, this article makes three contributions. First, the article explains the copyright-promotes-creativity narrative so policymakers can understand how the narrative is intended to work and evaluate whether it should be a goal of New Zealand copyright law at all. Second, the article synthesizes key challenges to that narrative, both longstanding (eg non-pecuniary motivations for creation; the uncertainty of rewards) and emerging (eg the anthropocentricity of the law relative to AI-driven modes of creation; alternative cultural conceptions of creativity), encouraging policymakers to critically reflect on their preconceptions of how copyright law should work. Third, the article presents initial pathways emerging from these discordances to reorient copyright law towards creativity for the public good, informed by legal developments and sociological insights from other jurisdictions.