Territorial Restrictions of Digital Copyright Licensing - In Terms of eBook
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Lee, Kun-Lin
Abstract
Nowadays, the copyright owners of American eBook market maintain the licensing practice of book market, implementing territorial restriction on ebook licensing. Although there are many technical means helping enforce territorial restriction in the cyber world, this paper wonders the enforceability of such means and whether they can reach the economic and legal purposes of territorial restriction or not. This paper applies the market segmentation theory to examine the appropriateness of applying the same territorial market segmentation in real world to cyber world. Price discrimination theory is also used to explore the enforceability of such practice, especially in terms of copyright law. This paper argues that even it is necessary to implement the same rule on Internet, we should also take the uneven geographical development of the Internet into account, rather than replicate the same territorial market arrangement. In addition, no matter in terms of parallel importation, technological protection measures, or licensing agreement, we can find them useless in protecting the territorial restrictions from being violated. In conclusion, it isn''t enforceable to apply territorial restrictions over the ebook end users. Copyright owners should consider applying this rule only over the direct licensees, whose number is smaller, such as publishers or ebook platforms, or managing the global market as a whole. As for Chinese ebook market, copyright owners may consider applying other licensing restrictions to segment the market. For example, the traditional and simplified characters may be used as the licensing restriction. That way, the need to maximize the loyalty income of copyright owners, to avoid cross-territorial competition among licensees or agencies, including platforms, and to protect the end users'' right to legally access ebooks might all be satisfied.
Subjects
territorial restriction
parallel importation
technological protection measures
DRM
licensing agreement
ebook
price discrimination
market segmentation theory
digital content
online content
Type
thesis
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ntu-101-R97a21104-1.pdf
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