Genealogies of copyright tariffs

Despite the centrality of tariffs in everyday practice, they have not been part of the thematic preoccupations of copyright scholarship. Perhaps the reason for this lack of interest is the sense that their technical and mundane character makes them somehow impenetrable or unattractive. Furthermore, the range of tariffs has often been subjected to feedback variations and processes of renegotiation, adjustment, amendment and referral, so tracking their changes or determining their stability has seemed a tedious exercise. Against that gloomy or dispiriting view of tariffs, this chapter is an attempt to trace their coming into being by positioning them as the central focus of its inquiry. Although the chapter is primarily concerned with their effects, an understanding of how they became inscribed in law is pertinent because it shows their historical significance in determining the scope of copyright. The suggestion here is that a focus on tariffs and their variations elicits a different type of observation of copyright, one that is characterised by a closer attention to practices and procedures operating at not only a local but also an international level.