Josh Fruhlinger runs the great blog Comics Curmugeon where he critiques the daily comics. Fruhlinger’s writing is insightful and funny and worthy of a place in everyone’s feed reader. Last Tuesday he wrote a column about how a change in FDA regulations launched a genre:

In 1997, when the FDA allowed prescription-drug manufacturers to actually tell people what their pills and potions did via television ads, did they foresee the consequences? Did they anticipate the flowering of an entirely new genre of short-form drama that would grace the airways every night throughout America, bringing tales of tragedy and heroism and wonderful pills into our living rooms?

Prescription-drug ads are like sonnets: the artistry is constrained by the rules of the form. In this case, the form demands that the stories play out quickly enough that viewers at home don’t change the channel, and that a bevy of terrifying side effects be explained in a manner both informative and reassuring. And, just as you may have found Cliff Notes helpful as you worked your way through Shakespeare’s poetry in high school, so too you might like to have the nuances of these drug ads explicated for you. On behalf of The Human Condition, Josh Fruhlinger is here to help. We begin with this ad for EpiDuo.

The entire story is worth a read. I like it because it provides a reminder that policy shapes art. The line between copyright’s incentives and our nation’s art may not be as overt as the connection between the FDA’s advertising regulations and a genre of commercials. But the Copyright Act provides incentives for certain creations while ignoring, or even discouraging, others. At the same time many advocate that law should better reflect art — that copyright should fairly compensate our artists for their creative practices — artists are manipulating their creative practices to reflect the law.