One of the most pervasive justifications for copyright protection is that it may incentivise creation and dissemination of socially useful works.1 That ubiquitous claim finds its most eloquent expression in the United States of America’s intellectual property clause2 and it has been quite prominent in the areas of copyright duration3 and the defences to infringement.4 The pivot on which the economic case for copyright rotates is the public goods characteristics of intellectual productions. Goods are public if they can be exploited concurrently without diminishing their utility to each user;5 a situation which potentially provokes free-riding behaviour. Simplified to its barest essence, ‘free-riding’ denotes employing resources without contributing towards the cost of their production6 and it may impede creation and dissemination of copyright works. Thus, for example, in the absence of copyright protection, users may avoid the cost of creating or preparing and marketing new works for publication by reproducing existing material. The market failure7 that is often associated with public goods is alleviated by conferring exclusive rights on authors for a defined period.8