Congressional economists tackle copyright issues

The Congressional Budget Office has released a new study on digital copyright issues outlining a set of principles for lawmakers that's largely focused on avoiding being tied too closely to past practices or to the interests of powerful companies or consumer groups. [News.com]

See: Elizabeth Rader (Copyfight) on the CBO study:

The report is really quite a good overview of the copyright debate, which points out the complexity that many persuasive writings on the subject try to avoid. This certainly shows hill types that there's a lot more to copyright issues than can be captured in 2 page letters ranting about piracy. That said, the report is, intentionally, limited to economic perspectives. There's no discussion of the effects, for example, of labelling millions of children criminals, and very little about upsetting consumers' reasonable expectations about what they can do with media they possess.

See also: CONGRESS SHOULD IGNORE COPYRIGHT'S 'VESTED INTERESTS,' CBO URGES [CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY]

Any revision of copyright law should ignore "the vested interests of particular business and consumer groups," a Congressional Budget Office report recommended, and instead focus on achieving a balance between intellectual property protection and consumer perceptions of fair use."Copyright Issues in Digital Media," released earlier this week (CED Aug 12 p4), made clear it was impartial on proposed legislation, but warned that modifying copyright law could have unintended consequences. Much of the report focuses on the argument that forbearance by Congress might give the affected industries time to craft digital rights management (DRM) solutions offering differentiated pricing models -- solutions CBO said would benefit copyright holders and consumers.Congress is being urged to find that copyright balance, CBO said, "but it cannot provide unambiguous conclusions about the best weighting of the interests of copyright holders and consumers." The reason, the report said, is that to declare a policy the best approach "implies a distribution of returns based as much on what is fair as on what is efficient. Economics does not provide answers to questions of fairness." CBO acknowledges a lot of money is at stake, but says changes should be based not on industry arguments about harm they might suffer, but on creating "efficiency in markets for creative goods and other products."