The economic dimension of the digital challenge: a copyright perspective (original) (raw)

The Past and the Future of the Economics of Copyright

The economics of copyright as such has certainly come of age. About 70 years has passed since the very first time that economists gave serious thought to the copyright system, although it has been only during the last 20 years that the literature has flourished. In this paper an overview of the general topic of the economics of copyright is given, and the areas that have already be touched upon are discussed. Then, a speculative answer is attempted to the question of what the near future will hold.

Economics of copyright: Challenges and perspectives

Mizan Law Review, 2014

This article outlines the prominence of economic analysis of copyright, not only within the academic community, but also in the legal practice. The successful cooperation of law and economics in the field of copyright calls for advanced microeconomic analytical skills and a high level of legal understanding of intellectual property. The study highlights the central dilemma between access of copyright users and incentives to authors, by raising important issues under the umbrella of the microeconomics of copyright and macroeconomic consequences of piracy.

The Effect of Technology on Copyright

Copyright and technology have a long and intertwined history during which both have felt their influence on each other. The exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution given to the creators of artistic and literary works today are very different from what they were 500 years ago when this relationship began. Copyright developed as a direct consequence of the invention of the printing press. Before its invention, the principle protecting author’s rights did not exist because the mass reproduction of literary works was not possible. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, however, revolutionised the industry and the stationers in England moved from reproducing single volumes by hand, to producing many more copies to match the growing demand, which resulted in books gaining significant financial value. Value that was difficult to access by the authors of the books until 200 years later when the Statute of Anne, in an effort to encourage the sustained production of original works, granted the authors exclusive rights to their works and started the whole copyright story. Modern national copyright legislation has evolved with different influences throughout history. However, as the world continued to develop and cross-border activity flourished, national copyright legislation was not sufficient to govern what had become a global concern. International agreements were developed over time that reacted to technology’s influence on copyright while at the same time setting the baseline for national copyright legislation to grow around. The Berne Convention remains the most important international agreement on copyright and most national laws and international instruments have developed with reference to it. Following the age of the printing press, the next major technologies to influence copyright were the new recording and broadcast technologies that brought revolutions that forced major shifts in copyright legislation in its efforts to curb infringement. The current digital era poses the biggest challenge copyright legislation has had to face in its history with technology enabling copyright infringements of a scale that by far exceeds all other periods combined. A lot of laws and litigation have marked the path leading up to the situation today, with many remedies proving ineffective in reversing the scale of copyright infringement. It is time that the copyright industry stopped fighting new technology and realise that their survival might depend on finding new business models that incorporate technologies like Peer to Peer networks into their strategies.

The copyright law in historical annals is known to be the legacy of technology. It has undergone systematic changes keeping in view the nature, extent and domain of technology involved to secure the public interest of creativity, innovation and ingenuity. Its main thrust is to provide adequate incentives to authors and creators of diverse copyright works, on the one hand, and make such works accessible to the public on the other hand. The copyright law had to adjust itself between the need to award the creator and the desirability of making such works public. With the ubiquity of the Internet as a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication all over the world, shrunk into a digital global village, the protection of copyright works has become a serious concern for lawyers, as well as, the other stakeholders. The Internet together with P2P computer networks makes it possible for an increasingly larger number of individuals to participate in collaborative information production, thereby enervate the efforts to provide incentives to original creators of intellectual property. The Internet enables the nearly-instantaneous, original quality reproduction of and world-wide, lightening-speed dissemination of copyrighted works. The above arresting features of Internet make itself emerge as "the world's biggest copy machine" The puzzles and paradoxes underlying the digital dilemma, by nature, are connected with the dichotomy between the notion of "information wants to be free" and the demands for stronger proprietary control of information in the digital environment. Against the above background this paper shall examine and critically analyze emerging issues regarding copyright protection in digital environment.

The optimal level of copyright protection

Information Economics and Policy, 2002

We specify the optimal level of copyright protection for an individual producer and the society as a whole. For an individual producer, the optimal level is (i) no protection, (ii) the level under which the producer's overall profit net of the development cost is zero, or (iii) full protection. The optimal level for the society, on the other hand, critically depends on the distribution of firms' development costs. We also show that an increase in copyright protection may increase or decrease the social welfare loss due to underutilization, while it will always decrease the social welfare loss due to underproduction.

" The only types of laws we need are effective laws, laws that are effective for their purpose, in the case of copyright, to promote the progress of science. " William Patry ABSTRACT: The digitalization of copyrighted works including text, music and video has dramatically increased the efficiency of unauthorized copying. Nowadays it is easier to copy and share digital information, to copy and paste from a web page, to share files. Even common tasks such as sending email and browsing the web involve the creation of copies. The Internet allows the infringers to produce thousands of copyrighted work at little cost. Providing legal protection against the copyright infringement has been the subject of an international treaty (the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty), a European Community Directive (the Information Society Directive) and major copyright legislation in the USA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Although there are consistencies among nations' intellectual property laws, each jurisdiction has separate and distinct laws and regulations about copyright. Overprotection of copyright could threaten democratic traditions and impact on social justice principles by unreasonably restricting access to information and knowledge. If copyright protection is too strong, competition, innovation and creativity is restricted. A balance between the interests of copyright owners in receiving fair reward for their efforts and the interests of copyright users in receiving reasonable access to copyright materials should be maintained. The paper discusses and compares different solutions and approaches to the issue of reducing the digital copyright infringement without restricting the innovation and creativity.

Two Comparative Perspectives on Copyright's Past and Future in the Digital Age

2017

This book review compares two recent titles on copyright law: THE COPYRIGHT WARS: THREE CENTURIES OF TRANS-ATLANTIC BATTLE by Peter Baldwin, and COPYFIGHT: THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF DIGITAL COPYRIGHT REFORM by Blayne Haggart. Both books are meticulously researched and carefully written, and each makes an excellent addition to the literature on copyright. Contrasting both titles in this joint review, however, helps to reveal a few respects in which each work is incomplete; indeed, each book occasionally reads as a critique of the other. Baldwin’s book places contemporary debates in a much deeper historical context, but in so doing overlooks some of the unique challenges contemporary technology poses to the law as well as the historically unprecedented obstacles that contemporary law raises to some forms of socially valuable innovation. Haggart’s book, in contrast, maintains a narrower focus on the contemporary era, yielding a superior accounting of the institutional and social interests...

Publishing Research Quarterly, 2021

This paper discusses aspects of economic analysis of law developed because of the status quo existing on the Internet and of the evolution of legal theory on copyright. It also explores the massive increase of interest in the law and economics of intellectual property during the first decade of 21 st century. The paper argues that law and economics discourse on copyright foregrounds policymaking with a focus on copyright's economic ramifications. This paper also examines Coase's theorem and its influence on considerations about copyright regulatory frameworks and potential reform to keep abreast of ongoing technological advancements and their impact on copyright protection in the digital age. I COPYRIGHTED WORKS ON THE INTERNET This paper discusses aspects of economic theory developed under the influence of the status quo existing on the Internet and of the evolution of legal theory on copyright. The emergence of the law and economics movement has captured various segments of policymaking, including the discipline of copyright in law. 1 The roots law and economics has emerged as a significant branch in legal theory with the seminal work of Ronald Coase, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1960). 2 The literature indicates a massive growth of interest in the law and economics of intellectual property by the beginning of the 21 st century. 3 Economics has a direct effect on copyright, and law and economics discourse on copyright has dominated

The economic dimension of the digital challenge: a copyright perspective (original) (raw)

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