New Research Report: Business Models for Digital Media

Today, the Berkman Center's Digital Media Project released a new research report that examines emerging business models for digital media distribution and the policy questions they raise. While Shawn Fanning's SNOCAP and iTunes have generated hype about the potential of digital media sales, policymakers have increasingly been asked to regulate this emerging marketplace and the copyright, intellectual property, and technological questions it raises. The new paper, Content and Control: Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries, offers a guide to policymakers facing these questions: it assesses the impact of different governmental decisions on emerging business models. As the authors conclude, "government intervention is currently premature because it is unlikely to strike an appropriate balance between achieving industry goals while supporting other social values, such as consumer rights, the diversity of available content, and technological innovation."