Digital Rights Management and Consumer Acceptability: A Multi-Disciplinary Discussion of Consumer Concerns and Expectations

The INDICARE project – the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe – has been set up to raise awareness about consumer and user issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions. One of the main goals of the INDICARE project is to contribute to the consensus-building among multiple players with heterogeneous interests in the digital environment. To promote this process and to contribute to the creation of a common level of understanding is the aim of the present report. It provides an overview of consumer concerns and expectations regarding DRMs, and discusses the findings from a social, legal, technical and business perspective. A general overview of the existing EC initiatives shows that questions of consumer acceptability of DRM have only recently begun to draw wider attention. A review of the relevant statements, studies and reports confirms that awareness of consumer concerns is still at a low level. Five major categories of concerns have been distinguished so far: (1) fair conditions of use and access to digital content, (2) privacy, (3) interoperability, (4) transparency and (5) various aspects of consumer friendliness. From the legal point of view, many of the identified issues go beyond the scope of copyright law, i.e. the field of law where DRM was traditionally discussed. Often they are a matter of general or sector-specific consumer protection law. Furthermore, it is still unclear to what extent technology and an appropriate design of technical solutions can provide an answer to some of the concerns of consumers. One goal of the technical chapter was exactly to highlight some of these technical possibilities. Finally, it is shown that consumer acceptability of DRM is important for the economic success of different business models based on DRM. Fair and responsive DRM design can be a profitable strategy, however DRM-free alternatives do exist too.Digital Rights Management; consumers; Intellectual property; business models

Private Copying and Fair Compensation: An empirical study of copyright levies in Europe

Following the Information Society Directive of 2001 (introducing the concept of “fair compensation” for private copying into EU Law), total collection from levies on copying media and equipment in the EU tripled, from about €170m to more than €500m per annum. Levy schemes exist now in 22 out of 27 Member States (with only the UK, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg remaining outside). Despite their wide adoption, levy systems are little understood, both in respect of their rationale and their economic consequences. Tariffs are increasingly contested in court, leading to a large gap between claimed and collected revenues. The European Commission has announced “comprehensive legislative action” for 2012. This report offers the first independent empirical assessment of the European levy system as a whole. The research consolidates the evidence on levy setting, collection and distribution; reviews the scope of consumer permissions associated with levy payments; and reports the results of three product level studies (printer/scanners, portable music/video/game devices, and tablet computers), analysing the relationship between VAT, levy tariffs and retail prices in 20 levy and non�levy countries. Key findings: There are dramatic differences between countries in the methodology used for identifying leviable devices, setting tariffs, and allocating beneficiaries of the levy. There are levies on blank media in 22 EU countries, on MP3 players in 18 countries, on printers in 12 countries, on personal computers in 4 countries. Revenues collected per capita vary between €0.02 (Romania) and €2.6 (France). The distribution of levy revenues to recording artists is less than €0.01 per album These variations cannot be explained by an underlying concept of economic harm to rightholders from private copying The scope of consumer permissions under the statutory exceptions for private copying within the EU vary, and generally do not match with what consumers ordinarily understand as private activities In levy countries, the costs of levies as an indirect tax are not always passed on to the consumer. In competitive markets, such as those for printers, manufacturers of levied goods appear to absorb the levy. There appears to be a pan-European retail price range for many consumer devices regardless of levy schemes (with the exception of Scandinavia). In non-levy countries, such as the UK, a certain amount of private copying is already priced into retail purchases. For example, right holders have either explicitly permitted acts of format shifting, or decided not to enforce their exclusive rights. Commercial practice will not change as a result of introducing a narrowly conceived private copying exception. A more widely conceived exception that would cover private activities that take place in digital networks (such as downloading for personal use, or non-commercial adaptation and distribution within networks of friends) may be best understood not as an exception but as a statutory licence. Such a licence could include state regulated payments with levy characteristics as part of a wider overhaul of the copyright system, facilitating the growth of new digital services

The Implementation, Application and Effects of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Information Society. CEPS Special Report No. 120, 19 November 2015

This study provides an ex-post evaluation of the EU copyright framework as provided by EU Directive 29/2001 on Copyright in the Information Society (InfoSoc Directive) and related legislation, focusing on four key criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and relevance. The evaluation finds that the EU copyright framework scores poorly on all four accounts. Of the four main goals pursued by the InfoSoc, only the alignment with international legislation can be said to have been fully achieved. The wider framework on copyright still generates costs by inhibiting content production, distribution and creation and generating productive, allocative and dynamic inefficiencies. Several problems also remain in terms of both internal and external coherence. Finally, espite its overall importance and relevance as a domain of legislation in the fields of content and media, the EU copyright framework is outdated in light of technological developments. Policy options to reform the current framework are provided in the CEPS companion study on the functioning and efficiency of the Digital Single Market in the field of copyright (CEPS Special Report No. 121/November 2015)

Copyright and shared networking technologies

PhDThe technological zeitgeist has transformed the social-cultural, legal and commercial aspects of society today. Networking technologies comprise one of the most influential factors in this. Although this transformation can be discounted as a mere historical phenomenon dating back to the advent of the printing press, empirical data concerning usage of these technologies shows that there has been a radical shift in the ability to control the dissemination of copyright works. Networking technologies allow, in an unprecedented manner, user-initiated activities including perfect replications, instantaneous dissemination, and abundant storage. They are immune to technological attempts to dismantle them, and impervious to legal attempts to control and harness them. They affect a global audience, which in turn, undermine at negligible costs, the legal and business parameters of copyright owners. The problem is whether it will now be possible to establish a copyright framework which balances the interests of the following groups: (a) copyright owners in their control of the dissemination of their works; (b) authors demanding remuneration for the exploitation of their works; (c) users wishing to consume works with clear immunity guidelines using networked technologies; (d) technologists striving to continuously innovate without legal and policy restrictions. Copyright law is not a mechanism for preserving the status quo or a particular business model. It is, as suggested above, a reflection of the needs and interests of authors, copyright owners, entertainment industries, users and technologists. This thesis examines whether the balance between these actors can be achieved and, if so, how it can be implemented within international, regional and national copyright laws. It finds that a balance can be struck; but that this balance should be aligned along three key concepts: user integrity; technological innovation; and authors‘ and owners‘ remuneration. The proposal is that the optimal method for achieving this triptych is the introduction and global implementation of a reasonable and unobtrusive system of remuneration

Intellectual Property Rights in Digital Media: A Comparative Analysis of Legal Protection, Technological Measures, and New Business Models under EU and U.S. Law

The production of digital content is a phenomenon which has completely changed the conditions of access to knowledge. Within this framework it becomes even more important to find and to formulate a new settlement for intellectual property rights balancing contrasted rights. Owners of the old technology and policy makers have found two different solutions and remedies for intellectual property rights: legal and technological. When both remedies work together any rights that a consumer may have under copyright law could be replaced by a unilaterally defined contractual term and condition. To balance this inequity this article analyses different solutions under U.S. and E.U. law, with particular attention paid to the relationship between contract law and copyright law. Ultimately this article suggests seeing technological protection measures as a souped-up standard form contract, and demonstrates how some business models are able to solve the problem of safe diffusion of digital media

The Death of Copyright: Digital Technology, Private Copying, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The advent of digital technology has increasingly stressed copyright\u27s ability to protect adequately creative works. By widely dispersing the ability to make near-perfect copies, digital technology renders copyright\u27s traditional approach of controlling unauthorized copying by direct legal action against the individual copier increasingly anachronistic. Fearing copyright\u27s inability to cope with the resulting risk of widespread private copying, copyright producers requested and Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ). The DMCA prohibits almost entirely the use and distribution of decryption technology that would defeat encryption-based controls placed on digital works, and thereby enables copyright producers to rely on encryption to protect their digital works. In doing so, Congress has re-created a protection scheme nearly identical to the one that the Stationers\u27 Company of London used to maintain its printing monopoly in England more than three hundred years ago. Both protection schemes rely on legal prohibitions that limit access to the technology necessary to reproduce protected works. Yet, given the threat digital technology poses, Congress may have had no choice. With anything less than almost complete prohibition, decryption technology would have inevitably slipped into the marketplace more generally and restored the potential for widespread private copying. Nevertheless, this article identifies two considerations that suggest that Congress has gone too far in enacting the DMCA. First, private copying is unlikely to reduce the revenue and incentives for creative works at the margins and is therefore not a threat to the progress of Science Congress is constitutionally constrained to serve. Second, private copying represents a critical form of democratic self-governance--civil disobedience--that allows consumers to determine the proper level of protection directly and thereby avoids the agency-cost flaws of determining copyright\u27s proper scope through our elected representatives. Given these two considerations, the DMCA\u27s prohibitions on the use and distribution of decryption technology may prove not merely unwise, but constitutionally infirm