Compensation Systems to Fix Copyright Conundrums: The Cultural Economics Perspective

The ope­ning spe­ech of the Digi­tal Euro­pe Eco­no­mic Semi­nars series was a pre­sen­ta­tion by Dr. Chri­stian Hand­ke (Era­smus Uni­ver­si­ty Rot­ter­dam), during which the spe­aker sought to answer the question of how best to use digi­ti­za­tion to pro­mo­te cul­tu­ral pro­duc­tion and its access.

This topic has many puz­zling aspects regar­ding, for instan­ce, the ambi­gu­ous role of the copy­ri­ght sys­tem in pro­mo­ting cre­ati­vi­ty and inno­va­tion, or the bene­fits and incre­asing power of com­mer­cial onli­ne plat­forms, which dis­se­mi­na­te cre­ati­ve content.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Dr. Chri­stian Hand­ke focu­sed on two issu­es. First, major the­mes in cul­tu­ral eco­no­mics and how they rela­te to prac­ti­cal questions abo­ut copy­ri­ght and cul­tu­ral poli­cy. Second, the merits of copy­ri­ght com­pen­sa­tion sche­mes that
(a) pro­vi­de legal cer­ta­in­ty to end users when using wide­ly ava­ila­ble onli­ne reso­ur­ces to access and use cre­ati­ve works, in exchan­ge for
(b) a sur­char­ge on Inter­net sub­scrip­tions, the pro­ce­eds of which are distri­bu­ted to rights hol­ders.  The pre­sen­ta­tion pro­vi­ded empi­ri­cal evi­den­ce that com­pen­sa­tion sche­mes could signi­fi­can­tly incre­ase the effi­cien­cy of cer­ta­in cul­tu­ral sectors.