Cooling-Off and Secondary Markets: Consumer Choice in the Digital Domain

This article studies the law and economics of cooling-off periods and secondary markets for online media. The discussion is fueled by a current debate: In July 2009, the online retail juggernaut, Amazon.com, remotely deleted literary classics from consumers’ portable “Kindle” reading devices. The public outcry and class-action lawsuit that followed have reinvigorated an ongoing debate about how much control digital media distributors should wield. Pundits and plaintiffs argue that too often, digital distributors like Amazon impair consumer freedom by misusing Digital Rights Management (DRM) software systems. However, these same systems could also provide significant benefits that have largely gone ignored. This article argues that, with the help of DRM, lawmakers could provide for cooling-off periods and nurture secondary markets for downloaded media that would benefit consumers, copyright holders, and digital distributors

Cooling-Off and Secondary Markets: Consumer Choice in the Digital Domain

This article studies the law and economics of cooling-off periods and secondary markets for online media. The discussion is fueled by a current debate: In July 2009, the online retail juggernaut, Amazon.com, remotely deleted literary classics from consumers’ portable “Kindle” reading devices. The public outcry and class-action lawsuit that followed have reinvigorated an ongoing debate about how much control digital media distributors should wield. Pundits and plaintiffs argue that too often, digital distributors like Amazon impair consumer freedom by misusing Digital Rights Management (DRM) software systems. However, these same systems could also provide significant benefits that have largely gone ignored. This article argues that, with the help of DRM, lawmakers could provide for cooling-off periods and nurture secondary markets for downloaded media that would benefit consumers, copyright holders, and digital distributors

Copyright Reversion in the Creative Industries: Economics and Fair Remuneration

The European Commission proposal to harmonize fair remuneration in Member States in EC ‘on copyright in the Digital Single Market’ COM(2016) 593 final) included the proposal to harmonise a right to contract reversion. Fair remuneration is an ambiguous concept for economists: some EC documents imply the policy is required for efficiency purposes, in others purely for equity reasons. Copyright to an extent attempts to deal with both and also at times confuses the two. This article tries to disentangle these issues. Research commissioned by the European Union (EU) prior to the proposal concentrated on the legal aspects rather than on the impact on markets. It would have benefitted from recent work in law and economics and in economics on reversionary rights as well as to a well-established body of research in cultural economics on labour markets of authors and performers in the cultural and media industries. That work shows both the variety of influences on motivation, incentives and contracts for creators, as well as exposing the difficulties of empirical research in this area. The article discusses work that has been done in economics dealing with copyright contracts and with reversion and considers the contribution studies on labour markets in the creative industries could make to the policy proposals on fair remuneration for creators and performers

Baltic Media Health Check 2015/2016

Baltic Media Health Check is an annual journalistic snapshot study aimed at measuring the current ‘temperature’ of the media markets in the Baltics, identifying the present trends, leaders and threats, as well as examining the most significant common issues, which, in this year’s study, is the regional and hyperlocal media and their future scenarios in the environment of growing pressures - digital, political, financial and other. Conceived and designed by the Baltic Investigative Journalism Centre Re: Baltica in collaboration with the Centre for Media Studies at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Baltic Media Health Check was reassigned to the Baltic Centre for Media Excellence (BCME) in 2016. BCME is a hub for smart journalism in the Baltics and beyond. Founded in 2015, this grassroots media NGO promotes professional growth, media intelligence and critical thinking and strives for positive change in journalism and communities it serves. Media research is one of the primary activities of BCME. https://baltic.media/in-focus/cross-border-consolidation-municipal-pseudo-papers-key-factors-in-the-baltic-media-marke

Sports teams’ home market size in the digital age - analyzing social media drawing power

The sport economic literature relies on the city size to proxy for the size of the home market of sports teams. This paper seeks to clarify whether the commonly used definition for home market size in sports economics is actually a valid measure for revenue potential in the modern digital age. Specifically, in this empirical exercise the interest is to investigate to what extent social media following is adding to our understanding of home markets. In doing so, it closely connects to the literature on outcome uncertainty, by considering the compounded season uncertainty for home games, and the literature on superstars in sport as a determinant for demand. The econometric analysis uses NFL stadium attendance data between 2009 and 2019 to examine the question of the relationship of social media and stadium attendance. It applies censored tobit models to estimate the effects. The results suggest a significant relationship between social media following and stadium attendance, even when controlling for the metropolitan area where the stadium is located. It argues that our commonly used definition of home market size is built on the outdated concept of localized markets and should be revisited

Regulating competition in the digital network industry: A proposal for progressive ecosystem regulation

The digital sector is a cornerstone of the modern economy, and regulating digital enterprises can be considered the new frontier for regulators and competition authorities. To capture and address the competitive dynamics of digital markets we need to rethink our (competition) laws and regulatory strategies. The thesis develops new approaches to regulating digital markets by viewing them as part of a network industry. By combining insights from our experiences with existing regulation in telecommunications with insights from economics literature and management theory, the thesis concludes by proposing a new regulatory framework called ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The thesis is divided in three parts and has three key findings or contributions. The first part explains why digital platforms such as Google’s search engine, Meta’s social media platforms and Amazon’s Marketplace are prone to monopolization. Here, the thesis develops a theory of ‘digital natural monopoly’, which explains why competition in digital platform markets is likely to lead to concentration by its very nature.The second part of the thesis puts forward that competition in digital markets persists, even if there is monopoly in a market. Here, the thesis develops a conceptual framework for competition between digital ecosystems, which consists of group of actors and products. Digital enterprises compete to carve out a part of the digital network industry where they can exert control, and their strong position in a platform market can be used offensively or defensively to steer competition between ecosystems. The thesis then sets out four phases of ecosystem competition, which helps to explain when competition in the digital network industry is healthy and when it is likely to become problematic.The third and final part of the thesis brings together these findings and draws lessons from our experiences of regulating the network industry for telecommunications. Based on the insights developed in the thesis it puts forward a proposal for ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The purpose of this regulation is to protect and empower entrants from large digital ecosystems so that they can develop new products and innovate disruptively. This regulatory framework would create three regulatory pools: a heavily regulated, lightly regulated and entrant pool. The layered regulatory framework allows regulators to adjust who receives protection under the regulation and who faces the burdens relatively quickly, so that the regulatory framework reflects the fast pace of innovation and changing nature of digital markets. With this proposal, the thesis challenges and enriches our existing notions on regulation and specifically how we should regulate digital markets

Regulating competition in the digital network industry: A proposal for progressive ecosystem regulation

The digital sector is a cornerstone of the modern economy, and regulating digital enterprises can be considered the new frontier for regulators and competition authorities. To capture and address the competitive dynamics of digital markets we need to rethink our (competition) laws and regulatory strategies. The thesis develops new approaches to regulating digital markets by viewing them as part of a network industry. By combining insights from our experiences with existing regulation in telecommunications with insights from economics literature and management theory, the thesis concludes by proposing a new regulatory framework called ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The thesis is divided in three parts and has three key findings or contributions. The first part explains why digital platforms such as Google’s search engine, Meta’s social media platforms and Amazon’s Marketplace are prone to monopolization. Here, the thesis develops a theory of ‘digital natural monopoly’, which explains why competition in digital platform markets is likely to lead to concentration by its very nature.The second part of the thesis puts forward that competition in digital markets persists, even if there is monopoly in a market. Here, the thesis develops a conceptual framework for competition between digital ecosystems, which consists of group of actors and products. Digital enterprises compete to carve out a part of the digital network industry where they can exert control, and their strong position in a platform market can be used offensively or defensively to steer competition between ecosystems. The thesis then sets out four phases of ecosystem competition, which helps to explain when competition in the digital network industry is healthy and when it is likely to become problematic.The third and final part of the thesis brings together these findings and draws lessons from our experiences of regulating the network industry for telecommunications. Based on the insights developed in the thesis it puts forward a proposal for ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The purpose of this regulation is to protect and empower entrants from large digital ecosystems so that they can develop new products and innovate disruptively. This regulatory framework would create three regulatory pools: a heavily regulated, lightly regulated and entrant pool. The layered regulatory framework allows regulators to adjust who receives protection under the regulation and who faces the burdens relatively quickly, so that the regulatory framework reflects the fast pace of innovation and changing nature of digital markets. With this proposal, the thesis challenges and enriches our existing notions on regulation and specifically how we should regulate digital markets

Strategic and Organisational fit in Corporate News Markets: A Principal-agent Approach to Studying Newspaper Mergers

This article analyses strategic and organisational fit in corporate newspaper mergers in the context of the digitalisation of local newspaper markets. Using the 2019 acquisition of Nordsjø Media by Amedia in Norway as case, we analyse how eight editors-in-chief perceive the process of incorporating small, low-frequency, print-oriented monopolistic newspapers into one of Scandinavia’s largest newspaper chains. The semi-structured interviews were analysed in light of perceived strategic and organisational fit in a principal-agent theoretical framework, the aim of which is to shed light on corporate ownership effects in consolidated newspaper markets. The analysis reveals the precarity of independent ownership in digitising news markets, to which corporatisation emerges as a necessary and welcomed solution. We find the strategic fit as perceived by editors to be tied to technological resources and scale economics, while organisational fit is hampered by the speed and pressure of corporatisation processes. While these results largely support findings from previous acquisition studies in the news industries, the contribution of this analysis lies primarily with the necessity of scale required by the technological transformation that forces independent newspapers to submit to larger chain operations and how it influences considerations of fit in disruptive digital news markets.publishedVersio

Inefficiencies in Digital Advertising Markets

Digital advertising markets are growing and attracting increased scrutiny. This article explores four market inefficiencies that remain poorly understood: ad effect measurement, frictions between and within advertising channel members, ad blocking, and ad fraud. Although these topics are not unique to digital advertising, each manifests in unique ways in markets for digital ads. The authors identify relevant findings in the academic literature, recent developments in practice, and promising topics for future research