On September 26, AUWCL’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property will hold a public conference on The Law and Economics of Copyright Users Rights. It will serve as a launch of an interdisciplinary project to conduct empirical research on the effects of flexibility in copyright law, including both the effects on consumer welfare and on innovation in the technology and creative industries.
The project will be led by faculty at the Law School and the Economics Department at American University, who will work with a small core of academics from around the world to gain a better understanding of how the structure of copyright limitations and exceptions affect industries, firms, and consumers. Our research will involve empirical work with data currently available, as well as the production of new data through surveys in countries where the structure of copyright law has changed. The surveys will produce panel data across countries and sectors for researchers seeking to explain how changes in the copyright regime affect individual and institutional consumers’ use and access to content.
The event on September 26 will bring together top scholars in economics and law. The first panel will review the empirical scholarship on the relationship between copyright limitations and exceptions and social and economic development and discuss new avenues for research that would improve our public understanding of the issue. The second part of the event will feature a roundtable discussion with regional copyright academics about the need for empirical evidence to promote balanced policy-making in regions where copyright reform initiatives are underway. The event will end with a keynote address by Sunil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society on the relation between intellectual property flexibility and innovation in the telecommunications sector in India.
The Law and Economics of Copyright Users Rights is free and open to the public. For the agenda, participant bios, and webcast, please see the conference webpage.
