Professor Alina Ng,  Assistant Professor of Law at the Mississippi College School of Law, recently published an abstract of a paper being written that argues that the protection of individual rights in literary and artistic works – besides encouraging creativity for progress – also brings into the copyright system a normative order for social conduct that advances society towards the goal of progress. The abstract of the paper, Property and Progress, summarizes the paper as follows:
…Copyright laws aim to protect intangible interests in the use of literary and artistic works to provide creators with an incentive to produce.