Measurement and Analysis of the Role of Licensing and Digital Rights Management in Conditions of increased User Participation, File Sharing and Piracy of Digital Media
by Giorgos CHELIOTIS
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Date: Time: Venue: |
17 July 2007 (Tuesday)
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Giorgos CHELIOTIS |
We look forward to seeing you at this research seminar. |
Abstract
Legal topics and related terminology surrounding intellectual property have been appearing with increasing frequency in discussions and articles about technology in the last years. The same is true of discussions about cultural production or the entertainment industry. Law, technology and economics converge on the debates about file sharing, piracy, and the future of the creative industries. There are two opposing forces at work: on the one hand, copyright law and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are meant to protect owners of digital content from piracy and other illegal uses of their content, but on the other hand, when used inappropriately, they may have a negative effect on the incentive to create, or on the incentive to purchase and consume the work.
In this talk I will present some results from the SMU CC-Monitor project, a collaboration between the School of Information Systems and the School of Law aiming to measure and analyze the global use of Creative Commons licenses, a relatively new model of licensing creative works which offers more liberal terms compared to the allowances of copyright law and has become hugely popular among bloggers and photographers and has also been adopted by some filmmakers, musicians and even public authorities. I will also present a preliminary economic analysis of the recent decision by EMI and Apple to offer premium quality DRM-free music downloads on the iTunes store. Both developments go against conventional wisdom that strong copyright protection and enforcement at the level of the law or at the level of computer code, though not socially optimal, are necessary to protect the value of a creative work. The analysis will show that, at least for music, it is more appropriate to view DRM as a product differentiation and price discrimination tool rather than an effective copyright protection mechanism.
Biography
Giorgos Cheliotis is a visiting assistant professor at the School of Information Systems of Singapore Management University. Before that he was a researcher with IBM Research and a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company. His past work on bandwidth trading and grid economics has been published in academic journals and books, while also receiving significant attention from industry and practitioners. Giorgos specializes in the conception and study of unconventional markets for digital goods and IT assets. His current research focuses on new licensing and business models for digital media, with an emphasis on music. He leads the ccMonitor project at SMU, analyzing the use of Creative Commons (CC) licenses. His recent presentation of CC usage data at the Creative Commons international summit has greatly stimulated interest in the topic (about 2000 views of the presentation slides within 10 days). Giorgos is also a member of the CC Singapore team.