Difference between revisions of "Copyright Evidence"

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Revision as of 17:41, 7 December 2015

Rcuklogo.jpg
Welcome to Copyright Evidence
909 studies are currently recorded
Semantic drilldown: Dynamically filter the recorded studies according to a range of semantic criteria
Random article:
Heald (2015) Heald, P. J. (2015). How notice-and-takedown regimes create markets for music on YouTube: An empirical study. In Concepts of Music and Copyright: How Music Perceives Itself and How Copyright Perceives Music (pp. 195-209). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783478194.00013
Methodology (Collection)
Methodology (Analysis)
Industry Sectors

Welcome to the Copyright Evidence Wiki developed and maintained by CREATe at the University of Glasgow.

Propose-study.png Define-study.png View-studies.png


CopyrightEvidence.org intends to establish a body of evidence that allows better navigation in a contested policy field. Competing claims can be assessed and challenged transparently if the underlying data and methods are revealed. Robustness and limitations of findings are meticulously collected and are available here for all to see.

This project is offering a form of a dynamic literature review in a rapidly changing technological, business and socio-legal landscape, as the evidence related to copyright is consistently and transparently updated to account for the most recent findings. Only very recently, new research methods in combination with the development of big data, which are richer both in size and in depth, have allowed researchers to test empirically key theoretical propositions and forced them to build theories which are consistent with observation. This generated the need to evaluate political decisions and design policy interventions based on evidence.

This open online platform builds on an innovative research philosophy and examines copyright from an interdisciplinary perspective, while it also facilitates bringing evidence to the debate from studies in fields that were previously overlooked. Relevant empirical work spreads across conventional methodological and disciplinary boundaries and it does not need to have "copyright" in the title.

A crucial dimension of the existing evidence examines different stages of production (e.g. creation, innovation, diffusion, distribution), in various creative industries (e.g. music, film and motion pictures, TV programmes, computer software, books), and estimates the effects of copyright on diverse agents in each sector, such as creators, investors, distributors, users or society as a whole. Heterogeneity seems to be a key common element across several studies. The fact that the impact of copyright law differs across various agents, industries and different demographic groups, implies the need for more specific policies (for instance, even though the Ofcom (2011) survey provides evidence for heterogeneous effects, this remains an understudied aspect in most of the existing studies).

The transition to a global digital economy is associated with new challenges for enforcement authorities, for copyright law and for new business models. Imaginative use of the increasing volume of data is crucial for the design of more rational policies at the national and international level. Importantly, the effects of copyright protection or infringement on welfare, creativity and innovation demand the theories that developed over the past decades to be consistent with rigorous empirical analysis.


Fundamental issues about the copyright incentive

Relationship between protection (subject matter/term/scope) and supply/economic development/growth/welfare (452)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Adermon and Liang (2011)Adermon, Adrian, Che-Yuan Liang. 2014. Piracy and Music Sales: The Effects of an Anti-Piracy Law. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 105, 90-106.20 May 2015 17:13:42
Aguiar and Martens (2013)Aguiar, L., & Martens, B. (2013). Digital music consumption on the internet: Evidence from clickstream data. Working Paper No. JRC79605. Available at SSRN 226529919 May 2015 12:31:33
Aguiar and Waldfogel (2014)Aguiar, Luis, and Joel Waldfogel. Digitization, Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade. Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade (December 3, 2014) (2014).11 April 2016 04:26:35
Aguilar (2017)Aguilar, A. (2017) Distributed Ownership in Music: Between Authorship and Performance. Social & Legal Studies, 27(6), pp776-79812 June 2019 15:02:36
Aguilar (2019)Aguilar, A. (2019) We want Artists to be Fully and Fairly Paid for their Work’: Discourses on Fairness in the Neoliberal European Copyright Reform. JIPITEC 9 (2)6 June 2019 14:45:17
... further results

Relationship between creative process and protection - What motivates creators (e.g. attribution, control, remuneration, time allocation)? What is the link between legal rules and the kind goods produced (e.g. adaptation, sampling, co-authorship, user creation)? (168)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguilar (2019a)Aguilar, A. (2019) The collective management of performers’ rights in the UK: a story of competing interests. Scripted 16(1) DOI: 10.2966/scrip.160119.45 November 2019 12:50:21
Ahn and Yooney (2008)Ahn, Illtae, and Kiho Yoon. On the impact of digital music distribution. CESifo Economic Studies 55.2 (2009): 306-325.8 April 2016 16:40:59
Akerlof, Hahn and Litan (2002)Akerlof, G. A., Arrow, K. J., Bresnahan, T., Buchanan, J. M., Coase, R., Cohen, L. R. & Hemphill, C. S. (2002). The copyright term extension act of 1998: An economic analysis. Washington DC: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.28 January 2017 20:33:28
Arai and Kinukawa (2014)Arai, Y. and Kinukawa, S., 2014. Copyright infringement as user innovation. Journal of Cultural Economics, 38(2), pp.131-144.10 July 2016 13:14:57
Aufderheide and Jaszi (2004)Aufderheide, P., & Jaszi, P. (2004). Untold stories: Creative consequences of the rights clearance culture for documentary filmmakers.18 August 2015 17:26:36
... further results

Harmony of interest assumption between authors and publishers (contracts between creators and investors, collective bargaining and licensing) (71)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguilar (2017)Aguilar, A. (2017) Distributed Ownership in Music: Between Authorship and Performance. Social & Legal Studies, 27(6), pp776-79812 June 2019 15:02:36
Arai and Kinukawa (2014)Arai, Y. and Kinukawa, S., 2014. Copyright infringement as user innovation. Journal of Cultural Economics, 38(2), pp.131-144.10 July 2016 13:14:57
Astle and Muir (2002)Astle, P.J. and Muir, A., 2002. Digitization and preservation in public libraries and archives. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 34(2), pp.67-79.15 June 2016 13:46:06
Bently (2002)Bently, L. (2002). Between a rock and a hard place: The problems facing freelance creators in the UK media market–place. London: Institute of Employment Rights. ii. Canada.18 August 2015 17:30:41
Bently et al. (2017)Bently, L., Kretschmer, M., Dudenbostel, T., Moreno, M. and Radauer, A. (2017) Strengthening the Position of Press Publishers and Authors and Performers in the Copyright Directive. Project Report. European Parliament, Brussels.29 May 2020 11:44:34
... further results

Effects of protection on industry structure (e.g. oligopolies, competition, economics of superstars, business models, technology adoption) (264)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguiar and Waldfogel (2014)Aguiar, Luis, and Joel Waldfogel. Digitization, Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade. Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade (December 3, 2014) (2014).11 April 2016 04:26:35
Akester (2009)Akester, P. (2009). Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment. Available at SSRN 1469412.13 July 2015 12:46:24
Albinsson (2013)Albinsson, S. (2013) Swings and roundabouts: Swedish music copyrights 1980 - 2009. Journal of Cultural Economics 37, 175 - 18415 August 2021 15:00:42
Andersen and Frenz (2008)Andersen, B., & Frenz, M. (2008). The impact of music downloads and P2P file-sharing on the purchase of music in Canada.8 August 2015 20:27:26
Andrés (2006a)Andrés, A. R. (2006). The relationship between copyright software protection and piracy: Evidence from Europe. European Journal of Law and Economics, 21(1), 29-51.21 October 2016 17:06:15
... further results

Understanding consumption/use (e.g. determinants of unlawful behaviour, user-generated content, social media) (489)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Acilar (2010)Acılar, A. (2010). Demographic Factors Affecting Freshman Students' Attitudes towards Software Piracy: An Empirical Study. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 7, 321-328.21 May 2015 06:46:49
Acilar and Aydemir (2010)Acilar, A., & Aydemir, M. (2010). Students' Attitudes Towards Software Piracy-The Gender Factor: A Case of a Public University in an Emerging Country. In The Eleventh ETHICOMP International Conference on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Information and Communication Technology.21 May 2015 08:57:13
Adermon and Liang (2011)Adermon, Adrian, Che-Yuan Liang. 2014. Piracy and Music Sales: The Effects of an Anti-Piracy Law. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 105, 90-106.20 May 2015 17:13:42
Adu and van der Walt (2021)Adu, T.L. and van der Walt, T.B. (2021) Effects of awareness of user rights on compliance with copyright laws and policies in academic libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(4)1 March 2023 09:22:29
Adum et al. (2019)Adum, A.N., Ekwenchi, O., Odogwu, E., and Umeh, K. (2019) Awareness of Copyright Laws among Select Nigerian University Students. 86 Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization 18311 August 2019 20:47:04
... further results

Evidence-based copyright policy

Nature and Scope of exclusive rights (215)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguilar (2017)Aguilar, A. (2017) Distributed Ownership in Music: Between Authorship and Performance. Social & Legal Studies, 27(6), pp776-79812 June 2019 15:02:36
Akerlof, Hahn and Litan (2002)Akerlof, G. A., Arrow, K. J., Bresnahan, T., Buchanan, J. M., Coase, R., Cohen, L. R. & Hemphill, C. S. (2002). The copyright term extension act of 1998: An economic analysis. Washington DC: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.28 January 2017 20:33:28
Antelman (2004)Antelman, K. (2004) Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact? College & Research Libraries News, vol. 65, n. 5, pp. 372-382.17 August 2018 11:33:07
Arai and Kinukawa (2014)Arai, Y. and Kinukawa, S., 2014. Copyright infringement as user innovation. Journal of Cultural Economics, 38(2), pp.131-144.10 July 2016 13:14:57
Arendt, Peacemaker and Miller (2018)Arendt, J., Peacemaker, B. And Miller, H. (2018) Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study. College and Research Libraries (Preprint)17 August 2018 10:44:46
... further results

Exceptions (innovation/public policy aims; open-ended/closed list; commercial/non-commercial purposes) (153)

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Introduction

Copyright laws provide for limits to the exclusive rights of the copyright owner through the provision of exceptions or defences to infringement. In UK legislation such provisions are referred to as ‘permitted acts’ (Chapter 3, Part I CDPA 1988). The international standard is the three-step-test set out in the Berne Convention: the permitted acts must apply to ‘certain special cases’, must not ‘conflict with a normal exploitation of the work’ and not ‘unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author’ (Berne Convention Art 9(2)). Whereas US copyright law provides for a general principle of ‘fair use’ (17 U.S.C. para.107), European Union legislation provides an exhaustive list of specific exceptions (Art 5 Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC); the implementation of one exception, (concerning certain ‘transient or incidental’ acts of reproduction) is compulsory, but others are optional. The UK has always provided for ‘permitted acts’ through specific provisions (as opposed to the broader principle of ‘fair use’ in US law), including ‘fair dealing’ in relation to criticism or review of a work, research or private study. In recent years, the UK has included further specific ‘permitted acts’ within the parameters of Art 5 Information Society Directive, for instance data mining and parody. The full list can be found at Part I, Chapter 3 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

There is a significant body of work by legal scholars exploring the rationale for imposing limits to the rights of the copyright owner. Amongst other things, the literature has explored the relation between these legal provisions and (i) the public interest, (ii) innovation, and (iii) market failure (as proposed by Kretschmer, 2014). For example, an exception which enables the use of orphan works (those works where the copyright owner is unknown or impossible to locate) could be justified under (i) as providing greater access to shared cultural heritage for social purposes. An orphan works exception could also be justified in terms of innovation under (ii) as unlocking expressions for new creativity, which would otherwise be undeveloped, or under (iii) because the costs in locating and asking permission from unknown rightsholders are high enough that they make it impossible to contract. Similarly, the UK debate of a private copying exception in 2014, justified it on all three grounds as (i) providing consumer benefit and convenience, bringing everyday practice into alignment with copyright statues, (ii) encouraging innovation by enabling intermediary services and (iii) addressing market failure by enabling a practice which takes place in the private sphere beyond the ability to contract. The exception was challenged according to justification (iii) with opponents arguing that it did not address market failure without an accompanying levy in place on writable media such as iPods and blank CDs. Other European jurisdictions use consumer levies to raise funds which are used to compensate rightsholders for private copying which takes place beyond their control. The argument that such copying could be priced-in and thus reflected in the initial price of creative goods was challenged in the UK. and a need for better evidence identified (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills EWHC 1723 (Admin) (19 June 2015). https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/basca-v-sofs-bis-judgment.pdf


Policy concerns

Policy concerns arise, for instance, from balancing the three justifications noted in the previous section, such as (i) the need to balance the public interest with other legal restrictions which may override the effectiveness of exceptions, such as end-user license agreements, contracts and DRM systems (see Favale, 2011; Hargreaves, 2012; Kretschmer et al, 2010); (ii) whether exceptions are compatible with broader political and economic objectives such as pursuit of a digital single market in the EU or new innovative digital practices (see Erickson et al, 2013; Mendis, 2013); and (iii) whether exceptions or private contracting would improve economic welfare, for example in choosing between a non-commercial exception for user-generated content or relying on proliferating use of automated private licensing (Heald et al, 2015; Karaganis & Urban, 2015). Some legal theorists and practitioners have proposed more radical changes to EU copyright law, questioning whether principles such as fair use or minimum standard user rights would be more appropriate legislative tools to promote innovation while remaining technologically agnostic (Dobusch & Quack, 2013).


Evidence available

Following the Gowers review of Intellectual Property in 2006 and leading up to the implementation of the Hargreaves review in 2014, a significant amount of data were gathered from industry, consumer and policy representatives in the UK context. These qualitative and anecdotal accounts nevertheless form a corpus which builds understanding of the various views and political stakes in the debates around copyright reform and exceptions (see Edwards et al, 2015; Erickson, 2014). Additional empirical data about the anticipated consumer welfare and economic impact of new copyright exceptions were collected and analysed as part of both review exercises (see for example the IPO impact assessments on Quotation and Parody). [LINK]

Scholarly research on exceptions consists of policy reports and peer-reviewed articles. Reports by Favale et al (2013) on the proposed orphan works licensing scheme and work by Erickson et al (2013) on the impact of the proposed Parody exception are indicative of evidence gathered and used in the policy process itself. Both of these studies adopt a mixed socio-legal/economics approach which explores the appropriate balance of rights and consumer interests in the context of incentivising new production and use of copyright works. In Canada, research by the CPCC (2008) on consumer music download behavior was used to argue for collection of a levy on format shifting of music content to digital devices, showing that format shifting behavior was a widespread practice. Canada adopted a levy-free digital format shifting exception in 2012.


Evidence needed

In order to evaluate and assess the implementation of new copyright exceptions, there are ongoing opportunities for researchers to provide evidence on the impact of changes to copyright in the form of specific exceptions, prior to and following their introduction. In the context of the UK, there is evaluative potential in the wake of the Hargreaves reforms of 2014. Research should verify whether there has been, for example, a measureable impact on audience or licensing revenue as a result of the UK parody exception. Comparative research and/or natural experimental methods are naturally suited to addressing these gaps for other national contexts.

In the case of newly proposed exceptions or potential reforms, additional empirical evidence is needed to assess and consider each of the justifications of copyright exceptions. For example, while legal-theoretical justifications exist for promoting the public interest through exceptions (i), there is less empirical evidence on the impact of exceptions on metrics of public interest such as participation, access, uptake, and knowledge dissemination. Where possible, qualitative assessments should be supplemented with quantitative sociological research in these areas. This research is of utmost importance to balance economic concerns which already form the main pillar of national policy evaluations. There is further empirical legal studies research to be done on the precise relationship between copyright statutes and creative enterprise. For example, who is using fair dealing exceptions and why? What are the impediments to relying on fair dealing exceptions for those who would create new expressions? What will be the status of different national exceptions if Europe moves toward a Digital Single Market? What should be the guiding principles for weighing the public interest in future policy determinations involving technology and the market?

A great deal of research has been carried out by management scholars and economists on the relationship between intellectual property and the ability of firms to appropriate value from innovation (Teece, 1986; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003). However, a smaller proportion of this research has dealt directly with copyright, and even fewer studies have addressed copyright exceptions (for one example, see Haefliger et al, 2010). Further research is needed to assess the impact of newly proposed exceptions, as well as their scope, on innovation-based justifications (ii). For example, the status of override-by-contract on copyright exceptions is important because it re-balances the scales between platform operators, users, and rightsholders, with potential implications for innovation. Empirical research is needed to assess whether the gains in innovation enjoyed by users due to exceptions can offset potential harm to rightsholders or losses of control suffered by platform operators.

Economic welfare calculations are central to policy decision-making around changes to copyright, as evidenced by the data used to evaluate the Hargreaves reforms. Economic approaches have been the most commonly applied methodological tools to assess copyright and they continue to be useful (Landes & Posner, 1989; Scotchmer, 2007; Waldfogel, 2014). The status of copyright exceptions requires further clarification in policy, which can be aided by rigorous empirical analysis. In order to further address policy concern about the status of exceptions in markets characterised by contracting and/or technological protection measures (TPMs), research must be conducted to establish (i) whether and how best to assert the primacy of exceptions and (ii) the anticipated economic impact of any proposed policy changes in terms of both industry growth and consumer welfare.


Additional concerns for research

The issue of user-generated content is at the forefront of policy reform initiatives, with some groups calling for a broad ‘right to remix’ on one end of the spectrum, and industry support for commercial licensing alternatives on the other. Copyright exceptions are directly implicated in this debate, because they legally define what users can fairly do with a copyright work (such as quoting or parodying it). Fair use and fair dealing principles are challenged by expansion of automated notice and takedown procedures that have become widespread on certain online content platforms. Empirical work is needed urgently on the ability of notice and takedown procedures to take into account fair use and fair dealing in online settings, so that clear policy recommendations can be made to improve the way that user-generated content is regulated.

The principle of fair use has been extensively analysed in empirical legal studies literature in the USA, with a large body of research covering many different consumer practices in many settings (See Cheliotis (2007); Netanel (2011); Aufderheide and Sinnreich, 2015). Somewhat less work has been done on the practical usage of specific copyright exceptions in Europe. There is therefore an open question about whether the ‘closed list’ approach adopted by Europe is the most effective way to balance public interest with copyright holders’ interests. While such expansive questions are perhaps best left to legal theorists, there are practical empirical concerns that are worth answering in the European context: How can the public interest best be served without prejudicing the rights of creators? What is the most effective way of promoting new innovation and how should copyright law respond to the challenges introduced by new technologies and new creative practices?


References

Dobusch, L., & Quack, S. (2013). Framing standards, mobilizing users: Copyright versus fair use in transnational regulation. Review of International Political Economy, 20(1), 52-88.

Edwards, L., Klein, B., Lee, D., Moss, G., & Philip, F. (2015). Discourse, justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21(1), 60-77.

Erickson, K., Kretschmer, M., & Mendis, D. (2013). Copyright and the Economic Effects of Parody: An Empirical Study of Music Videos on the YouTube Platform and an Assessment of the Regulatory Options. Independent Report for the UK Intellectual Property Office (2013/24).

Favale, M. (2011). Approximation and DRM: can digital locks respect copyright exceptions?. International Journal of Law and Information Technology, 19(4), 306-323.

Favale, M., Homberg, F., Kretschmer, M., Mendis, D., Secchi, D. (2013). ‘Copyright and the Regulation of Orphan Works: A comparative review of seven jurisdictions, and a rights clearance simulation’, Independent Report for the UK Intellectual Property Office (2013/31).

Gowers, A. (2006). Gowers review of intellectual property. London UK: The Stationery Office.

Hargreaves, I. (2011). Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth: An Independent Report. London: UK Intellectual Property Office.

Heald, P., Erickson, K. Kretschmer, M. (2015). The Valuation of Unprotected Works: A Case Study of Public Domain Photographs on Wikipedia. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 28(3) p. 1-37.

Karaganis, J., & Urban, J. (2015). The rise of the robo notice. Communications of the ACM, 58(9), 28-30.

Kretschmer, M., Derclaye, E., Favale, M., & Watt, R. (2010). The relationship between copyright and contract law. A Review commissioned by the UK Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP).

Kretschmer, M. (2014). What does empirical evidence contribute to the question of fair copyright?.Paper presented at British-Israeli Workshop on Fair Copyright Law: Limitations & Exceptions, Tel-Aviv University, January 6-7, 2014.

Liebowitz, S. J. (1985). Copying and indirect appropriability: Photocopying of journals. The Journal of Political Economy, 945-957.

Mendis, D. (2013). The Clone Wars'-‐Episode 1: The Rise of 3D Printing and its Implications for Intellectual Property Law-‐ Learning Lessons from the Past. European Intellectual Property Review, 35(3), 155-169.

Teece, D. (1986). Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research policy, 15(6), p. 285-305.

Von Hippel, E. and Von Krogh, G. (2003). Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization science, 14(2), p. 209-223.


Related Studies

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Adu and van der Walt (2021)Adu, T.L. and van der Walt, T.B. (2021) Effects of awareness of user rights on compliance with copyright laws and policies in academic libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(4)1 March 2023 09:22:29
Akerlof, Hahn and Litan (2002)Akerlof, G. A., Arrow, K. J., Bresnahan, T., Buchanan, J. M., Coase, R., Cohen, L. R. & Hemphill, C. S. (2002). The copyright term extension act of 1998: An economic analysis. Washington DC: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.28 January 2017 20:33:28
Akester (2009)Akester, P. (2009). Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment. Available at SSRN 1469412.13 July 2015 12:46:24
Angelopoulos (2012)Angelopoulos, C. (2012). The myth of European term harmonisation: 27 public domains for the 27 member states. International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (2012) Vol, 43, 567-594.28 June 2016 09:21:45
Arai and Kinukawa (2014)Arai, Y. and Kinukawa, S., 2014. Copyright infringement as user innovation. Journal of Cultural Economics, 38(2), pp.131-144.10 July 2016 13:14:57
... further results


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Mass digitisation/orphan works (non-use, extended collective licensing) (78)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Akmon (2010)Akmon, D. (2010). Only with your permission: how rights holders respond (or don’t respond) to requests to display archival materials online. Archival Science, 10(1), 45-64.22 June 2016 13:56:10
Allen (2012)Allen, N. (2012) Art Museum Images in Scholarly Publishing. Texas: Connexions.6 January 2022 16:30:09
Angelopoulos (2012)Angelopoulos, C. (2012). The myth of European term harmonisation: 27 public domains for the 27 member states. International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (2012) Vol, 43, 567-594.28 June 2016 09:21:45
Astle and Muir (2002)Astle, P.J. and Muir, A., 2002. Digitization and preservation in public libraries and archives. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 34(2), pp.67-79.15 June 2016 13:46:06
Athey, Mobius and Pal (2017)Athey, S., Mobius, M. M., & Pál, J. (2017). The Impact of Aggregators on Internet News Consumption.16 February 2017 14:02:35
... further results

Licensing and Business models (collecting societies, meta data, exchanges/hubs, windowing, crossborder availability) (288)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguiar and Martens (2013)Aguiar, L., & Martens, B. (2013). Digital music consumption on the internet: Evidence from clickstream data. Working Paper No. JRC79605. Available at SSRN 226529919 May 2015 12:31:33
Aguiar and Waldfogel (2014)Aguiar, Luis, and Joel Waldfogel. Digitization, Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade. Copyright, and the Welfare Effects of Music Trade (December 3, 2014) (2014).11 April 2016 04:26:35
Aguilar (2017)Aguilar, A. (2017) Distributed Ownership in Music: Between Authorship and Performance. Social & Legal Studies, 27(6), pp776-79812 June 2019 15:02:36
Akmon (2010)Akmon, D. (2010). Only with your permission: how rights holders respond (or don’t respond) to requests to display archival materials online. Archival Science, 10(1), 45-64.22 June 2016 13:56:10
Allen (2012)Allen, N. (2012) Art Museum Images in Scholarly Publishing. Texas: Connexions.6 January 2022 16:30:09
... further results

Fair remuneration (levies, copyright contracts) (136)

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Aguiar and Martens (2013)Aguiar, L., & Martens, B. (2013). Digital music consumption on the internet: Evidence from clickstream data. Working Paper No. JRC79605. Available at SSRN 226529919 May 2015 12:31:33
Aguilar (2019)Aguilar, A. (2019) We want Artists to be Fully and Fairly Paid for their Work’: Discourses on Fairness in the Neoliberal European Copyright Reform. JIPITEC 9 (2)6 June 2019 14:45:17
Aguilar (2019a)Aguilar, A. (2019) The collective management of performers’ rights in the UK: a story of competing interests. Scripted 16(1) DOI: 10.2966/scrip.160119.45 November 2019 12:50:21
Akerlof, Hahn and Litan (2002)Akerlof, G. A., Arrow, K. J., Bresnahan, T., Buchanan, J. M., Coase, R., Cohen, L. R. & Hemphill, C. S. (2002). The copyright term extension act of 1998: An economic analysis. Washington DC: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.28 January 2017 20:33:28
Albinsson (2013)Albinsson, S. (2013) Swings and roundabouts: Swedish music copyrights 1980 - 2009. Journal of Cultural Economics 37, 175 - 18415 August 2021 15:00:42
... further results

Enforcement (quantifying infringement, criminal sanctions, intermediary liability, graduated response, litigation and court data, commercial/non-commercial distinction, education and awareness) (463)

The issue

The optimal way to enforce the private right of copyright, when someone uses protected work without permission, remains a topical and debatable issue. Copyright enforcement influences the quantity and quality of new products, the volume of sales, innovation, creativity and ultimately welfare. The existing empirical literature focuses on some of these factors in isolation. However, practice, policy and research suggest that the evidence on the overall impact of copyright enforcement is far from being conclusive.

The existing theories and legal traditions emphasize the importance of different aspects of enforcement, such as the detection, deterrence, rehabilitation, and punishment of criminals and infringers. According to Weatherall et al. (2009) the literature has focused on very broad copyright issues, such as intellectual property (IP) rights as a whole, and on very narrow cases where court judgements have been made, leaving the interesting area in between unexplored. Hall et al. (2014) examine this overlooked region by contrasting formal and informal IP. They reveal that costly litigation practices in several occasions tend to encourage secrecy over patents. An interlinked crucial but challenging feature of law enforcement relates to prevention and its association with awareness, education and technology. Unambiguously, technological progress has boosted the volume of piracy but it has also facilitated the prevention of unauthorised copying, through takedowns of infringing websites, for instance. In particular, this type of technological enforcement has become increasingly important over the past decade.


Policy interventions

Recent policy interventions focus mainly on measuring unlawful behaviour and quantifying infringement, separating copyright infringements from copyright criminal offenses, distinguishing commercial from non-commercial use, calculating intermediary liability, enhancing education, digital literacy and awareness, comparing different enforcement practices, such as demand- and supply-side sanctions, graduated responses, sites blocking, mediation versus litigation and court proceeding, among others.

Copyright policy interventions are concentrated on both consumption and production. Demand-side sanctions target individual subscribers via graduated response letter warnings, slowing down Internet speed for infringers (throttling back), termination of access, fines and imprisonment. Supply-side sanctions, on the other hand, focus on infringing companies via blocking sites, targeting intermediaries (follow the money approach), legal action, and increasing consumers’ awareness with clean sites lists, among others. Different countries follow different approaches. In continental Europe enforcement is undertaken mainly by agencies of the state, whereas in Anglo-Saxon countries they work jointly with private actors (see IPO, 2015).

A major policy challenge relates to intermediary liability. The extent to which communications platforms, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook or open Wi-Fi administrators, are liable for their users’ behaviour remains a hotly debatable subject, while its association with innovation, freedom of expression and aggressive online activity, renders this issue as a key concern for enforcement. Among other interventions governments attempt to receive assistance from intermediaries for the implementation of copyright law. The introduction of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) in the US and the 2000 Electronic Commerce Directive in the EU, which implemented treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), focus precisely on intermediary liability and criminalise both the dissemination of protected material without permission and the circumvention of copyright controls in response to notices and takedowns.

In the presence of infringement and when copyright exceptions do not apply, enforcement can be imposed in different forms. When infringement is detected and the rights holders choose action instead of inaction, an important distinction relates to the type of action and in particular to the option between judgement and settlement. Settlement and resolution of the matter with infringers directly can save time and money before starting court proceeding – this includes Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADR), such as arbitrations and mediations. If, however, such efforts are unsuccessful, litigation through the court system might be a more efficient but also a costlier and lengthier way to resolve the dispute.


Evidence

Recent evidence suggests that the transition to a global digital economy is associated with new challenges for enforcement. Online user behaviour and copyright infringement take new forms, as, for instance, physical activity becomes digital in an increasing pace, posing additional threats to the implementation of copyright law. Criminal IP offenses (also known as counterfeiting or piracy), which are often connected with organised crime, manufacture, distribution and commercial sale, have changed dramatically too, as technological progress simplified the production of unauthorised copies and digitization widened the market considerably.

The appropriate scope of copyright protection is a matter of debate (see Exceptions) To what extent non-commercial activities should come within the ambit of enforcement requires particular attention. Importantly, non-profit organisations, such as universities or the education sector as a whole, may engage in activities which are considered to be commercial, thus falling under the same copyright rules as commercial enterprises. There is a tension between the generation of income pursued by these organisations, and the (desirable) promotion of education, scientific knowledge and innovation. At the same time it raises distributional deliberations regarding the access to education and the equality of opportunity, as different institutions, which typically educate students from certain socioeconomic backgrounds, might have dissimilar capacities to stay within copyright law. The accessibility of resources through open data and open access publishing remains one of the most topical issues about copyright enforcement and its relation to knowledge, science and innovation (see Frosio, 2014).

Shifting attention to distinctively commercial activities and in particular to the music industry Liebowitz (2014) shows that global recorded music sales decreased by 50% in the ten years after the introduction of Napster in 1999, while before that they were on an upward trend. In response to this during the past decade there have been several antipiracy policy interventions, while researchers have evaluated the effectiveness for only a small subset of them. Among the demand side antipiracy legislations are HADOPI and IPRED, both of which have been passed in 2009 in France and in Sweden, respectively. The former has been implemented via graduate responses and has been evaluated by Danaher et al. (2014), who provide evidence of a 25% increase in legal sales after the introduction of HADOPI for France, while there is no such effect in other countries with a similar pre-policy sales trend. Adermon and Liang (2014) find comparable results for IPRED, which increased post-policy sales by 36% and decreased piracy by 32% in Sweden, relative to Norway and Finland. Two of the main supply side interventions are the shutdown of the Megaupload and the UK site blocking, both of which have been implemented in 2012. The main difference between the two policies is that the former is a worldwide intervention, while the latter is restricted in the UK only. Danaher et al. (2015) suggest that global interventions, such as the Megaupload are more effective than national policies, such as the UK site blocking, which focus on a particular country or geographic region.

The Hargreaves (2011) report commissioned by the UK government, which is in harmony with earlier recommendations by the Gower’s review (2006), focuses on evidence related to enforcement and emphasizes: i) the need for market transactions to be faster, more automated and cheaper, in order to establish a UK digital copyright market which facilitates the resolution of disputes without costly litigation, ii) the demand for easier cross-border licensing in the EU. The report also acknowledges that small and medium size enterprises should have easier access at a lower cost to the court system and recommends the establishment of a small claims track for copyright to better resolve the many lower-value IP disputes emergencing from self-employed professionals and relatively small firms.

Copyright enforcement is associated with large pecuniary costs from approximately £0.8m per year in Italy and £2.5m in the UK, to £5.6m in France and £12.7m per year in South Korea (see IPO, 2015). However, the evidence on copyright and economic activity is still inconclusive, perplexing the role of enforcement. For instance, Rob and Waldfogel (2006) and Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2007), among others, suggest that there is no evidence that music or file downloading harms either the volume of sales or the quality of goods produced. According to Waldfogel (2012) an explanation might be that the digitization of the music industry brought not only piracy but also large reductions in the costs related to the production, distribution, and promotion of music, while it has also widened the market. This piece of evidence raises further considerations about copyright policy, the associated cost of enforcement and its welfare implications.


Evidence needed

Both the probability of being caught and the sanctions vary, even across comparable jurisdictions offering researchers a unique source of variation and allowing them to establish causal links between enforcement and other key variables of interest, such as sales, innovation and welfare. However, a common weakness in the existing literature and a key methodological challenge for future research is the inability to construct a convincingly appropriate control group to compare the results between treated and untreated countries. Several studies argue that they select two comparable countries, one of which implements an enforcement policy (treatment group), while the other does not (control group), and they evaluate the impact of the policy by contrasting variables of interest before and after the adoption of the intervention. Yet, there is generically a degree of arbitrariness associated with the selection of the reference or control country. One way to deal with such issues is the formation of a synthetic control group, which by construction deals with the appropriateness of the control group (a synthetic control group is comprised of different countries, which jointly form a group that is directly comparable to the treated country). Surprisingly enough, none of the existing studies on copyright follows this approach.

Additionally, in the digital age enforcement in one jurisdiction is likely to generate global spillover effects through the Internet. In the UK, for instance, IP crimes can be fined with up to £50,000 and lead to custodial sentence of up to 10 years (CDPA, 1988), while in other countries sanctions might be less or more severe. This disparity influences incentives and forces piracy to be organised in particular areas, while the derivative products can be easily distributed widely across the world.

There is some evidence from a small minority of countries on the effectiveness of different enforcement practices. For instance, stakeholders suggest that graduated response letters are relatively successful. As far as supply-side sanctions are concerned, evidence shows that making it easier, quicker and cheaper for rights holders to act against infringers is effective but also challenging. A key policy concern relates to the reflexes of enforcement authorities in response to changing technology, behaviour and legislation, as well as to the fact that so far reactions have been mainly therapeutic rather than preventive.

Despite the significant progress made by some groups of researchers, such as the OHIM infringement observatory projects and the Ofcom/Kantar/IPO infringement tracker surveys, we still lack rigorous evidence and data related to copyright and users’ behaviour. In particular, there is an increasing demand for more data and evidence, from more countries and the use of new research methods for the design of future policies. Importantly, evidence-based policies require the identification of causal effects for particular policies and the examination of both direct and indirect welfare implications, as copyright enforcement is linked to innovation, privacy, civil liberties and freedom of speech, among others, which perplexes further the evaluation of policy effectiveness.


References

Adermon, A., & Liang, C. Y. (2014). Piracy and music sales: The effects of an anti-piracy law. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 105, 90-106.

CDPA (1988), Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Danaher, B., Smith, M. D., Telang, R., & Chen, S. (2014). The effect of graduated response anti‐piracy laws on music sales: evidence from an event study in France. Journal of Industrial Economics, 62(3), 541-553.

Danaher, B., Smith, M. D., Telang, R. (2015). Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Age: Empirical Economic Evidence and Conclusions. WIPO/ACE/10/20.

Frosio, G. (2014). Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review. CREATe Working Paper 2014/01.

Gowers, A. (2006). Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. The Stationery Office

Hall, B., Helmers, C., Rogers, M., & Sena, V. (2014). The choice between formal and informal intellectual property: a review. Journal of Economic Literature, 52(2), 375-423.

Hargreaves, I. (2011). Digital Opportunity. A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth.

IPO (2015). International Comparison of Approaches to Online Copyright Infringement: Final Report.

Liebowitz, S. (2014). The Impacts of Internet Piracy. In The Economics of Copyright: A Handbook for Students and Teachers, Watt, eds. Edward Elgar Publishers, pp. 225-240.

Oberholzer-Gee, F., & Strumpf, K. (2007). The effect of file sharing on record sales: An empirical analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 115(1), 1-42.

Rob, R., & Waldfogel, J. (2006). Piracy on the High C’s: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students. Journal of Law and Economics, 49(1), 29-62.

Waldfogel, J. (2012). Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster. Journal of Law and Economics, 55(4), 715-740.

Weatherall, K., Webster, E., & Bently, L. (2009). IP Enforcement in the UK and Beyond: A Literature Review. Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy Report, Number EC001.


Related Studies

 CitationCreated"Creation date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the first revision of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
Acilar (2010)Acılar, A. (2010). Demographic Factors Affecting Freshman Students' Attitudes towards Software Piracy: An Empirical Study. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 7, 321-328.21 May 2015 06:46:49
Acilar and Aydemir (2010)Acilar, A., & Aydemir, M. (2010). Students' Attitudes Towards Software Piracy-The Gender Factor: A Case of a Public University in an Emerging Country. In The Eleventh ETHICOMP International Conference on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Information and Communication Technology.21 May 2015 08:57:13
Adermon and Liang (2011)Adermon, Adrian, Che-Yuan Liang. 2014. Piracy and Music Sales: The Effects of an Anti-Piracy Law. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 105, 90-106.20 May 2015 17:13:42
Adum et al. (2019)Adum, A.N., Ekwenchi, O., Odogwu, E., and Umeh, K. (2019) Awareness of Copyright Laws among Select Nigerian University Students. 86 Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization 18311 August 2019 20:47:04
Aguiar and Martens (2013)Aguiar, L., & Martens, B. (2013). Digital music consumption on the internet: Evidence from clickstream data. Working Paper No. JRC79605. Available at SSRN 226529919 May 2015 12:31:33
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Editorial Information

Editors

  • Theo Koutmeridis (economics) [lead editor]
  • Kris Erickson (media & communications)
  • Martin Kretschmer [chair of editorial board]

Methodology

Guidelines for the cataloguing of copyright evidence where developed following a CREATe workshop on 20 October 2014, attended by Sayantan Ghosal (Dpt of Economics, University of Glasgow), Georg v Graevenitz (Queen Mary University of London & CREATe Fellow in Innovation Economics), Morten Hviid (Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia) and Ruth Towse (Bournemouth University & CREATe Fellow in Cultural Economics). Further consultations have taken place with Chris Buccafusco (New York University), Smita Kheria (University of Edinburgh), Joost Poort (Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam & CREATe Fellow in Economics of copyright and media industries) and Steven Watson (Lancaster University).

The initial selection of 500 studies was drawn from four sources:

  1. A scoping review of the "piracy" literature commissioned by CREATe from Watson, Fleming and Zizzo, published in 2014. This used a review technique from the medical sciences to identify more than 50,000 academic sources that were potentially relevant for assessing unlawful file sharing, covering music, film, television, video games, software and books. During the review process, the sources were narrowed down to 206 articles which examined human behaviour.
  2. Working papers and pre-prints published in the SSRN e-journal Intellectual Property: Empirical Studies (edited by Christopher J. Buccafusco and David L. Schwartz). 710 papers published between November 1996 and July 2015 were narrowed down to 132 studies relevant to copyright law. These were further reviewed by the core editorial team of the Wiki (Koutmeridis, Erickson, Kretschmer) if they contained “sufficient empirical material” that warranted coding. “Sufficient empirical material” could be quantitative or qualitative. Our working definition excluded anecdotal or journalistic treatment, though single case studies were acceptable if the methodology was articulated and justified. A total of 103 studies were selected and catalogued from this SSRN source.
  3. Expert literature reviews conducted by Handke (2011), Kretschmer (2012) and Kheria (2013). They were used to fill some of the gaps left by the “piracy” review, in particular relating to creator perspectives. A total of 81 studies will be catalogued under this method.
  4. 50 governmental reports on intellectual property/copyright policy, proposed by CREATe doctoral candidates Kenny Barr and Megan Blakely, and reviewed by the core editorial team of the Wiki (Koutmeridis, Erickson, Kretschmer).

The initial selection of studies was pragmatic. The aim was to set a standard of review, and allocate limited resources for coding. The Wiki format is designed to enable user participation, and any gaps in the evidence should be filled by interested parties who may submit studies as candidates for coding, and/or volunteer to code these according to the template developed by the team.

An editorial review process will be devised that will be open, yet robust enough to prevent capturing of the Wiki platform by any specific interests. For this purpose, an editorial board will be constituted, following the public launch of the Wiki, on 2 September 2015, as part of the 10th Annual Conference of the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association (EPIP 2015).

The text which appears in the main page has been commissioned and reviewed by the editorial team. In particular, the initial texts for 'evidence-based copyright policy' have been written by Kris Erickson and Elena Cooper (B. Exceptions) and by Theodore Koutmeridis (F. Enforcement).

How to cite The Copyright Evidence Wiki

If you use material from CopyrightEvidence.org, please cite the resource appropriately:

Koutmeridis, T., Erickson, K., & Kretschmer, M. (Eds.). (2015). The Copyright Evidence Wiki: Empirical Evidence for Copyright Policy. www.CopyrightEvidence.org. CREATe Centre: University of Glasgow. Accessed dd/mm/yyyy.

When citing make explicit reference to the date when the platform was accessed, as the content is subject to revisions.