Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2160718.2160730
economic and
Business Dimensions

Digitization and Copyright:
Some recent evidence
from Music

CoPyrIGHT-relATeD INDUSTrIeS have been threatened by technological change in the past decade. Events raise questions about whether copyright policy, or its enforcement, requires rethinking. Evidence-based policy-making requires, of course, evidence. That begs the question: what do we really know about piracy and its effects?

As it turns out, there has been an outpouring of research on some copyright-related issues in the past decade. The results may surprise some readers. Reports of shrinking revenue in the copyright-protected industries are a cause for concern and further exploration, but many of the answers needed to inform sensible policy are not yet available. Sensible policy has to ask the right questions, and it has to inform the answers with the right data.

Napster started it

Photogra Ph by chriS angle

Much of what is known about copyright concerns the recorded music industry. Yet, recorded music makes up a relatively small part of the copyright-dependent sectors of the economy, which includes motion pictures, software, video games, and publishing, among others.

Why is the music market the favored
topic among researchers even though
music itself is not intrinsically impor-
tant? Blame it on Napster. Because file
sharing has been widespread since
Napster, the music market has experi-
enced a shock with observable effects,
namely, a weakening of copyright pro-
tection. Most observers agree that tech-
nological change has sharply reduced
the effective degree of protection that
copyright affords since 1999.

the original logo for a 1980s anti-copyright infringement campaign by the British Phonographic industry (BPi), a British music industry trade group.