Abstract
This paper explores the social, demographic and attitudinal basis of consumer support of a Copyright Compensation System (CCS), which, for a small monthly fee would legalise currently infringing online social practices such as private copying from illegal sources and online sharing of copyrighted works. We do this by first identifying how different online and offline, legal and illegal, free and paying content acquisition channels are used in the media market using a cluster-based classification of respondents. Second, we assess the effect of cultural consumption on the support for a shift from the status quo towards alternative, CCS-based forms of digital cultural content distribution. Finally, we link these two analyses to identify the factors that drive the dynamics of change in digital cultural consumption habits. Our study shows significant support to a CCS compared to the status quo by both occasional and frequent buyers of cultural goods, despite the widespread adoption of legal free and paying online services by consumers. The nature of these preferences are also explored with the inclusion of consumer preference intensities regarding certain CCS attributes. Our results have relevant policy implications, for they outline CCS as a reform option. In particular, they point evidence-based copyright reform away from its current direction in the EU of stronger enforcement measures, additional exclusive rights, and increased liability and duties of care for online platforms. This work shows that CCS may be an apt policy tool to hinder piracy and potentially increase right holder revenues, while respecting fundamental rights and promoting technological development.
Highlights
Copyright Compensation Systems (CCS) are legal schemes that for a monthly fee would legalise currently infringing online social practices, such as private copying from illegal sources and unauthorised online sharing of copyrighted works
Rights holders were hoping that private ordering based on strong exclusive rights will lead to the development of successful legal services, while online piracy will be eliminated through a combination of additional enforcement measures, technical protection measures (TPMs), better monitoring of infringing activities, increased liability on online intermediaries for infringing acts by their users, and increasing penalties for infringement by end-users
When we look at the average price of the CCS preferred within each cluster, we observe that digital consumers - who already pay for their cultural consumption - tend to choose alternatives at higher prices (€11.5), followed by pirates at only slightly lower average price (€9.9).A one-way ANOVA of type of consumer on average price of chosen alternative compensation system shows that average price is significantly different between types of consumers (F (4, 4863) = 147.4, p < 0.001)
Summary
Copyright Compensation Systems (CCS) are legal schemes that for a monthly fee would legalise currently infringing online social practices, such as private copying from illegal sources and unauthorised online sharing of copyrighted works. A CCS can have many theoretical and practical benefits, such as: monetising previously unmonetised user practices; lowering levels of copyright infringement; reducing costs associated with enforcement; decreasing the transaction costs of obtaining authorisation from rights holders; and increasing legal certainty (Handke, Bodó and Vallbé, 2016) Despite these advantages, rights holders were hoping that private ordering based on strong exclusive rights will lead to the development of successful legal services, while online piracy will be eliminated through a combination of additional enforcement measures, technical protection measures (TPMs), better monitoring of infringing activities, increased liability on online intermediaries for infringing acts by their users, and increasing penalties for infringement by end-users. The development of case law has revealed that copyright enforcement can conflict with the fundamental rights of individual users (namely as freedom of expression, the protection of privacy and personal data) and online intermediaries’ (in particular freedom to conduct business) (Quintais, 2017)
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