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Proprietà intellettuale e mercati: Il ruolo della tecnologia e conseguenze microeconomiche
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Based on a set-up where two competing firms produce software products with respective support packs, we analyze a government's choice of optimal level of monitoring and penalty for social welfare maximization. After simulating the pricing strategies we observe that social welfare and consumers' surplus are maximized at competitive, and profits are maximized at monopoly price levels. By using the monitoring rate the government can balance the distribution of welfare among users and producers of software. When monitoring rates are at deterrent levels, increasing the penalty level results in increased firm profits, whereas total consumers' surplus and social welfare decrease.
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.
Copyright law today is straining to keep pace with rapid technological advance in information technologies. For example, through the Internet today a copy of a digital file can instantaneously and flawlessly enter the collections of many individuals, thus potentially depriving the copyright holder of revenue from licensed sales. As a consequence, holders of copyright on a variety of types of creative works in digital format are questioning the right of consumers to make use of copyrighted materials in potentially infringing ways. Consumers, on the other hand, have begun to chafe at copyright owners' use of digital technologies to impose obstacles to some uses for copyrighted works to which they have become accustomed. Copyright law has implications not just for producers and consumers of copyrighted material but for society at large. First, economic growth from investments in digital hardware, software and in communications are linked, at least in part, to the availability of creative content in digital form. Hence, when and how the digital copyright debate is resolved may influence the growth of those sectors of the economy. Second, potential revisions to copyright law may have an impact on broader social concerns such as individual privacy and free speech.
Radio broadcasters need not negotiate in a free market with the copyright holders of sound recordings to be able to broadcast those sound recordings on radio. This is unlike television broadcasters, who must negotiate with movie copyright owners before they can broadcast the movies. In some instances (the United States, for instance) radio broadcasters have no obligations whatsoever to the copyright owners of the sound recording (as opposed to the copyright owners of the music). In other instances the radio broadcasters must pay a performance right fee for broadcasting the sound recordings, but these fees are determined by governmental or judicial agencies and need not bear any relationship to what negotiated rates would be. The reason for the weaker copyright protection on sound recordings relative to movies appears to be that radio broadcasters have argued, and it is generally accepted, that radio play benefits record sales and thus there is less need for radio broadcasters to purchase the rights to broadcast the sound recording. This impact of radio play on record sales is commonly referred to as a "symbiotic" relationship between these two industries and is often mentioned by radio broadcasters as a reason for keeping rates low, at hearings to set copyright payments. Yet there appears to be no systematic examination of this relationship. In this paper I present evidence indicating that radio play does not appear to benefit overall record sales. There are obvious implications for copyright since the lack of a symbiotic relationship implies a higher expected negotiated payment for the copyright on sound recordings. I also examine, by way of comparison, television's negative impact on the movie industry.
This article explores methods and issues in measuring the contributions of copyright industries to national economies. It reveals the importance of copyright value creation, identifies copyright industries and activities that make economic contributions, discusses problems of measurement, compares methods used and reveals difficulties in comparability of existing research, and provides suggestions for improving and undertaking future research.
Licensing of copyrighted material can contribute to welfare. But what fee is socially desirable fee? The owner's marginal cost of licensing is often near zero, but P = MC = 0 is arguably neither equitable nor an efficient incentive for further creative activity. Here two fee-setting approaches are described, assuming copyright rules are pre-established and determine the holder's earnings, absent licensing. One approach is Ramsey pricing, theoretically second best and able to preserve the copyholder's earnings. The second is 'parity pricing', as derived in the price-regulation literature, which can ensure effective free entry into commercial use of the licensed material.
In July of 2002, the World Intellectual Property Organisation organised a working group of economists to study the methodologies that are appropriate when attempts are made to measure the economic contribution of copyright to a national economy, with the final objective being to produce a guide-book that will enable future studies to be made, all within a common methodological framework. Dimiter Gantchev, a consultant with WIPO, was encharged with the task of writing the resulting Guide-book.
In continental Europe, copyright law is traditionally viewed as a so-called 'natural' right - briefly put: it is simply right for the author to enjoy the fruits of his labor. However, socio-economic considerations are becoming more in important in European copyright doctrine. One reason for this tendency is that more and more copyright matters are regulated at the EU level and that the European regulator explicitly adheres to the economic rationale for copyright law. In this contribution, it is investigated what the apparent economic policy goals are of the EU Copyright Directive of 2001 - which is by far the most ambitious piece of EU legislation in the area of copyright to date. The purpose of this article is not to set-out new, cutting-edge economic theories on copyright law, but merely to analyze what the explicit and implicit aim of the Directive is and to explore what, according to standard, mainstream and widely known economic theory, will be the likely result of the new regulations on copyright law. Will the Copyright Directive succeed in achieving its apparent goals? What does economic theory predict about its impact? The emphasis is on the most important and controversial changes that the Copyright Directive brings about. These are the introduction of a right of temporary reproduction, the limiting of the exhaustion of copyright, the abolishing of remuneration rights and, last but certainly not least, the broad protection of technological measures - i.e. DRM systems. The article concludes that the Directive appears to be based on a great belief in the beneficial effects of granting property rights in information products and in the ability of the market mechanism to achieve an optimal result. However, it may well be argued that apparent faith in the 'invisible hand' of the market is unjustified. Particularly, the public good character of information products is not taken into account. Moreover, the provisions of the Directive may hinder competition to a further extent than copyright traditionally did, which could have an undesirable result as well. Additionally, the apparent reliance on market forces to match the demand for uses with the offered technological usage restrictions may be unsubstantiated. There may be valid arguments for limiting the freedom of contract and the freedom to block any information usage technologically.