January 13, 2005
- ISP Fellow Michal Tsur on "A License to Kill Innovation."
- Berkman long-term-affiliate and digital media project team member Derek Slater on "Content and Control: Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries"
Michal Tsur, ISP Fellow
Shay David, PhD Candidate, Cornell University, Science & Technology Studies
The objective of this article is to unpack some of the mystique that surrounds open source licenses (OSLs), to explicate the implications of OSL selection on software innovation, and to suggest how certain modifications to the OSLs that have become de-facto standard licenses in open source development today could better accommodate the competing needs of different would-be innovators that have diverse motivations for writing software.
Derek Slater, Berkman Affiliate
Content and Control: Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries
The online environment and new digital technologies threaten the viability of the music and film industries' traditional business models. The industries have responded by seeking government intervention, among other means, to protect their traditional models as well as by developing new models specifically adapted to the online market. Industry activity and public debate have focused on three key policy areas related to copyright holders' control of content: technical interference with and potential liability of P2P services; copyright infringers' civil and criminal liability; and legal reinforcement of digital rights management technologies (DRM).
This paper seeks to support policymakers' decision making by delineating the potential consequences of policy actions in these areas. To do so, it assesses how such action would impact relevant social values and four business models representative of current and emerging attempts to generate viable revenues from digital media. The authors caution that 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.