Copyright: Economic Driving Forces

ECONOMIC DRIVING FORCES

There are several economic driving forces that are generated due to copyright issues, typically the infringement of those copyright issues.

1. Lost revenues

The corporations that legally own the rights to original or existing content effectively means that sale of this product allows them some revenue. Bypassing these official channels would result in a loss of revenue, as has clearly been exhibited by the music industry's attack on peer to peer file sharing networks.

2. Consumer preferences

The consumer's willingness to access content illegally or without paying for it grew exponentially in the late 90s. However, the crack down by the music industry has meant that the

3. IP and true ownership

The creaters of new and original content - artists - might be torn by copyright issues that arise due to advances in technology. The World Wide Web allows artists to reach a much wider pool of people they would not traditionally have been able to reach. From that perspective, their opinions are far reaching, and have the potential to reach people - customers - that may never have come accross their content otherwise

The flip side is that the publisher (music, print or video) must retain their rights to ownerhips of the material if the creator has an existing contract with that party.