Study: Should Innovation Play a Larger Role in Today’s Copyright Debates?
By Dennis Kuba
July 16, 2012
July 16, 2012
Michael A. Carrier, Rutgers University School of Law, has published a paper (“Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story”) that details the results of a study intended to examine the relationship between copyright law and innovation.- The study includes in-depth interviews with 31 top executives from the recording industry, technology companies, and venture capital firms. The paper tells a story about the Napster decision that ultimately led “to losses to innovation, venture capital, markets, licensing, and the ‘magic’ of music.”
- The following quotes are taken from Carrier’s paper:
- “The record labels had an existing business model that was profitable and that they knew how to exploit. As a result, they ‘thought they were bulletproof.’ They ‘saw the Internet as a fad or problem that need[ed] to be eradicated.’”
- “Another ill-fated decision was for the labels to treat record stores, rather than end-users, as their customers. Yet because of this focus on the record stores, the ‘real customers’ became ‘pissed off and angry at the pricing of albums and/or the weakness of most of the songs’ and turned to file-sharing.'”
- “Lawyers at the labels historically drove the digital agenda. There was no one there with a truly entrepreneurial spirit. Zero, zilch, zingo, nada. No one there whose entire initiative was not to hang on to the past.”
- “A record label official admitted that the ‘digital strategy’ was ‘just a plain defense’ that focused on antipiracy, copy protection, and ‘doing everything in their power to keep it locked up.'”
- “The respondent explained that he ‘did one music deal [where] the company ended up shutting down because the labels just kept taking more and more and more.'”
- A record label executive observed “the industry had a ‘missed opportunity’ to create ‘stronger connections with fans.’ ’15 years into digital exploration…when I buy a song, I still only get the song’ instead of extras, like exclusive interviews and backstage access.'”
- “The labels ‘had an opportunity to achieve their dream of owning everything from content creation to distribution to sale’ but ‘chose not to’ in order to ‘eke out a few more years of CD sales.'”
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