AT&T Tech Support 360Does copyright create $2.2 trillion in value? No, but fair use does (UPDATED)
The Computer and Communications Industry Association--a Washington D.C.-based think tank and lobbying group--has issued a report [PDF] that dispels some common mythology around the value of intellectual property to the U.S. economy. CCIA found that "fair use" exceptions to copyright created $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the U.S. economy.
That's a big number, but it's not surprising. Just think of how difficult it would be to innovate if anyone (including Microsoft et al., which are members of CCIA) relied on a strict view of copyright.
From InformationWeek's report of the study:
"Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner," CCIA President and CEO Ed Black said in a statement. "To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation and, as today's study indicates, an engine for growth for our country."...
Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion, said Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion.
The fair use economy's "value added" is thus almost 70 percent larger than that of the copyright industries.
The $4.5 trillion in annual revenue attributable to fair use represents a 31 percent increase since 2002, according to the report, which claims that fair use industries are responsible for 18 percent of U.S. economic growth and almost 11 million American jobs.
In short, those industries that rely on copyright to fuel their business should be even more grateful for fair use exceptions to their copyrights. The U.S. economy would shrink if it were purely based on compliance with traditional intellectual property strictures.
In other words, we need "leakage" in our copyright rules in order for copyright to work at all. Open source is a way of vastly broadening "fair use" in software, making it highly available for third-party usage. I'd therefore suggest that we'll see tremendous economic value created by open source.
As, in fact, we do. Imagine that.
UPDATE: By the way, Nick Carr decimates the article here. Oh, well. The idea was right.
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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Factor 1: The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature is for nonprofit educational purposes.
While Technology can?t identify if the usage is transformative, it can detect if the page on which reuse occurs has advertising present. As evidenced by recent moves by the New York Times, advertising is clearly driving the online content economy making commercial use an increasingly important factor.
Also, you can learn a lot about the purpose and character of a use by whether or not attribution is provided, which in the online world, amounts to links from the copy to the original.
Factor 2: The nature of the copyrighted work
No help from Technology here - it can't accurately determine if the work is fiction or non-fiction.
Factor 3: The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
This is a fancy way of saying that the less of your content that is taken, the more likely it qualifies as Fair Use. This could be detected based on the percentage of the original content that has been reused.
Factor 4: The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Technology can indicate if ads are present on the reusing site which can be combined with monthly site traffic to determine impact.
Disclaimer in that I work for Attributor which provides the above functionality; regardless, any objective measures to Fair Use are a good thing and should result in less litigation
Products are sold for fair use both intended and unintended.
*The goods and services purchsed in obtaining the copyright and patent do add to the economy.
If all data was either individual or public domain, the world would be a better place, imo. Until then, I intend to put all data I create under the CC-BY-SA and GNU GPLv2 licenses.