Towards a Liberal Copyright

Against Monopoly reports a new working paper "File-Sharing and Copyright" by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The authors write that: "Copyright exists to encourage innovation and the creation of new works; in other words to promote social welfare. The question to ask is thus whether the new technology has undermined the incentives to create, market, and distribute entertainment." The authors conclude that: "As this essay has made clear, we do not yet have a full understanding of the mechanisms by which file sharing may have altered the incentives to produce entertainment. However, in the industry with the largest purported impact – music – consumer access to recordings has vastly improved since the advent of file haring. Since 2000, the number of recordings produced has more than doubled. In our view, this makes it difficult to argue that weaker copyright protection has had a negative impact on artists’ incentives to be creative."

Beyond adding my usual comment that copyright is not meant to be a welfare system for content producers, I won't be saying much. Below are links to articles/posts that have opined that a liberal copyright policy is better than the so-called strong copyright. I hope that you will find them interesting.

The link immediately below is a review of "File-Sharing and Copyright"
Harvard Study Finds Weaker Copyright Protection Has Benefited Society

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales An Empirical Analysis
(Here Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf conclude that: "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero.")

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada
Here Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz write that: "Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing."

Against Intellectual Property

Against Intellectual Monopoly

Digital Productions

A Tale Of Two Studies On File Sharing...

Respected Dutch Researchers Note That Piracy Has A Positive Impact On The Economy

Textbook Company Embraces Free For Infinite Goods, Charges For Scarcities

Copyright And Its Harm On Culture

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Explains How Intellectual Property Damages Innovation

How Copyright Is Holding Back The Creative Class

The sampling above is probably overkill, but I hope that it will serve as potential reference material should you wish to refute the propaganda of the content industry that so-called strong copyright (that deprives the consumer of their rights to content) is necessary to foster creativity.