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Statistical Analysis of Copyright Registrations
linuxizer writes "I've been poking around in Penn's Library for most of my Freshman year, looking up copyright statistics. What I found is basically what many suspected all along: extending and strengthening copyright terms has little effect on actual innovation. Perhaps most fascinating is the strong 40-year upward trend in registrations which is sharply broken in 1991 with a precipitous decline. Also included are some interesting observations about the RIAA's data. The numerous graphics should be well-enough explained that you don't need to go to the data files, but they are included if needed."
By $DEITY man! Get out, get drunk, get laid! There'll be plenty of time to poke around libraries when you're 40!
There's something wrong with you if most of your freshman year of college is spent looking up copyright statistics.
"I've been poking around in Penn's Library"
I thought the only one who did that was Teller.
Thank you, I'll be here until I get booed off stage.
extending and strengthening copyright terms has little effect on actual innovation but how do you measure innovation? you can't just say that so many more CD's were sold or so many more compositions were written. The statistics are there but I believe that they don't prove the hypothesis.
Site contains multiple popups and spyware.
I clicked on the link and there were 5 popups plus a Gator install! What kind of a sadistic freak are you?
(yes, I know, don't use IE, etc. work computer, don't have much of a choice)
Well you have to also analyze the quality of the those extensions. A well thought out extension to the copyright terms could certainly have a positive effect on innovation, but sadly the viewpoint of the bodies making those extensions is only to protect. Little thought is given as to how it could be used to effect innovation positively.
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
"I found is basically what many suspected all along: extending and strengthening copyright terms has little effect on actual innovation."
Innovation isn't always completely tied to copyright terms. Take the GNU/BSD licenses (copyright terms) of the recent decade. They're successfull and at least a part of their success comes from people being not satisfied with other copyright terms.
Indirect the innovation comes from the strengthening of other copyright terms, but you cant say it doesn't have any effect. It does, people are searching for other ways in order to not infringe other stupid copyrights (MS EULA).
Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
My understanding is that registration isn't required in order for your work to be copyrighted, and hasn't been required since at least 1976. Everything I read on this give some line about how registering a copyright makes your court case easier if you have so sue someone over infringement, but I wonder how many published works are registered.
I would venture to guess that most mainstream works are.
Made curious by the continual claims of politicians and industry executives that stronger copyright leads to more innovation, I went to the library early Freshman year to see if there was any corroberating research. I was unable to find any, so I went to a historical index of statistics. However, that only had data until 1970, so I extracted the more recent data from the annual Statistical Abstract(s) of the United States.
.99 .
The trends are fascinating, especially in a field where a surprising amount of innumeracy and overinterpretation appears from people who should know better. For instance:
"We did a survey in April that asked people the reasons why they downloaded, and 65% said because it was free," a BPI spokeswoman said.
They are, of course, absolutely correct. But they leave it up to the reader to infer that those respondents are displacing purchases with free music. In effect, however, what is happening is price discrimination. Those who are willing to tolerate lower-quality music are paying less (nothing) for it. Those who are not pay more. Society gains, the industry loses--and then only assuming recent studies showing that downloads serve as a form of music sampling, a free preview for users that later buy music, are incorrect.
Now, on to the data. Some of this pertains directly to copyright, others directly to the RIAA.
Most interesting to me was one trend that my statistics professor, Professor Wyner, pointed out. From the early 1950's until 1991, copyright registrations rise exponentially. In fact, a simple quadratic fit shows an Rsquare of over
That a four-decade trend of such strength could reverse itself in a single year so dramatically--and without an apparent cause--is incredible. The fact that it happens across all categories of copyright suggests the effect is perhaps due to a change in the way the Copyright Office records entries. However, given that music registrations correlate well with overall registrations, it would have to have been a policy change for all copyright entries. The sheer precipitousness of the plummet belies many otherwise viable explanations. However, in 1992, Congress passed Public Law 102-307, making renewal automatic for works from 1964-1977. Depending on whether the Copyright Office was including renewals in its statistics, 1991 could be a break in analyzability for the data. Furthermore, if they did, indeed, include renewals, trends will be blurred and obfuscated by the lagging renewal registrations.
The single-category music registrations show the same plunge.
Also interesting is that, as the price of CDs increase, shipments increase. This trend is not nearly as strong as the former, and is only based on a decade of data provided by the RIAA. Possible explanations for this trend include that CDs are a luxury item--unlikely, I should think--or that the economy's rise during this period (1990-2000) lead to an increase in spending.
And, in fact, it did. A classical Demand Curve. Not such a great mystery after all, as it turns out.
Since we are starting to analyze statistics provided by the RIAA at this point, I should mention that they have a nasty tendency to only release data which they can put a proper spin on. Consequently, analyzing becomes much more difficult and leads to kludges such as the 2002 CDs shipped data extrapolated from news of an 8.8% decline from previous years. If anyone would provide me with a complete set of Nielson SoundScan statistics this project would be much easier. If anyone disputes my figures please provide me with a better set. Many of these numbers took hours to find, here from one source, there from another. Fortunately, most of the time there was some overlap in data provided, so I was able to see that the numbers were directly comparable.
That said, the numbers are interesting. The RIAA has been shipping fewer CDs in the last few years, by all accounts. The most recent (and most contested) numbers come from SoundScan
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
So the premise remains valid. The conclusion is pretty clear as well, as seen from the decades following the passage of the 1909 and 1976 laws: the drastic expansions of copyright had little to do with increasing innovation in this country.
Like the study says, this is good grounds to stop extending copyrights as extending them would only serve to give incentive to innovate through prolonging the period of returns on said innovation. If this becomes widely accepted then it's just a matter of arguing copy rights are too long, (or too short?) as to provide enough incentive to innovate.
Note that the conclusions (and in the entire study) says nothing about copy right extensions slowing innovation.
I really would like to see some analysis on the negative effects (if at all) of copyright extensions on innovation.
Innovation is impossible to quantify. Using the number of copyright registrations as the measure of innovation is ignoring much, mostly innovation in the public domain. There's nothing wrong with puting together these statistics for analysis, but jumping to any conclusion about quantity of innovation is impossible. It's simply impossible to factually state whether innovation increased or decreased during any period of time. It's purely judgemental.
Developers: We can use your help.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Prior to copyright extension private preservationists undertook the job of saving many, many obscure films that had no economic value to the former copyright holder, yet to have a cultural and historical place in the history of cinema. Now these films are totally off limits. Major studios have no interest in preserving obscure silent movies from the 1920s, yet the copyright extension has stopped private efforts to fill the gap.
The copyright extension removes all financial impetus for private individuals to undertake film preservation. Previously, companies such as Grapevine Video would undertake the preservation and recoup expenses by selling video tranfers to libraries and collectors. Maybe 200 or 300 sales at most. Now Grapevine Video is being forced out of business because they can no longer preserve and sell obscure films from our past.
The studios who own the copyrights are not going to fund preservation of films for which they can sell only a hundred or two videos. This is where private enterprise filled the gap through the meager financial incentive that public domain material offered. Now that incentive has completely gone, and most small companies involved in film preservation are now going out of business.
According to an obsolete brief, on 1993-02-16, the Copyright Reform Act of 1993 was introduced in both houses of the US Congress. If the bill passes [I assume it did?], [it will] remove the requirement for registration prior to bringing suit, and would remove the restrictions on statutory damages that are described above.
Looks like a reason why registrations would trail off...
Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.
-- Effective interview responses, "Homer the Vigilante"
NMG
We all need to ask ourselves how much is the public domain worth anyway?
The answer is A LOT. Our artists and culture are suffering.
-- Have you read 1984?
Since 1997, clicking this link is a Jail-able offense in the US.
All jokes about the wasting of his freshman year, and the innumerable popups (Long Live Mozilla!) aside, this was a rather interesting article.
I'd like to have seen the copyright numbers graphed next to some population numbers to see how they compare. Do the number of copyrights registered in the US correlate with the number of people in the US?
Also, the number of copyrights seems to follow a fairly linear trend until 1950, and then it suddenly becomes quadratic until 1991. Why? Was there some huge up-swing in population growth at that point, or something? (The baby-boomers wouldn't have started registering copyrighted works until much later, would they?) Did everyone suddenly discover acid and become that much more creative?
Ian
So the author wanted to find out why copyright registrations declined after 1991? Well, there was a big depression shortly after that time. The article's author was pointing out how the Great Depression and the different major wars of the last century negatively affected copyright registrations, so it makes sense. I know he/she was probably 8-10 yrs. old in the early 90's so maybe he/she never really grasped how bad times were. And look! registrations start rebounding around '95-96 when IT started taking off.
Even a 10-year copyright term would be sufficient to counter the problems you are pointing to.
Since the page in question doesn't really come to a tidy conclusion, this is what I extracted from his "pretty data":
* Around 1991, the overall number of copyright registrations plummeted compared to what the data would predict.
* The number of musical compositions experienced a similar plunge, implying that fewer musical compositions led to fewer copyright registrations.
* During those years, the RIAA continued to ship certain CDs in proportion to their price, in keeping with the law of supply and demand.
* Probable conclusion: The RIAA's current financial woes are due to nothing more than an abrupt reduction in the number of recordings released.
Of course, IANAS. Did I miss anything?
The author seems to make a correlation between the number of copyright registrations and the number of musical compositions. I don't believe that a true 1:1 comparison can be made between them.
It's been my experience (as a songwriter and producer) that a single work can be covered by a number of copyrights. For example, I would regularly compile a tape of unpublished recordings, entitle it "Compositions, 19xx to 19xx", and send it in with a Form PA and $20. Once I'd published a recording of a song, I'd copyright just that work. Also, the recording (tape, single, LP, or CD) would have its own copyright (under Form SR, which covers sound recordings specifically, that (P) sign that often accompanies ©). Additionally, lyrics could be copyrighted separately (under Form TX, for written works).
Sounds anal, but I had a lawyer who specialized in entertainment law suss it all out for me.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
There are popups and a Gator install?
Although statistics might have their place somewhere I've yet to find that place...
...100% of polls are misleading and only serve the purpose or ideology of the entities invloved...
The place you have yet to find is where proper data is gathered for the situation under investigation and no inferences are drawn from the statistics other than the strictly limited ones a given statistical method is designed to permit. Sadly, your statement about polls or other methods of gauging public opinion is correct since every effort is made under those circumstances to force the analysis into a path that supports a predetermined agenda. In this article, however, the author goes to some lengths to avoid these pitfalls. He clearly describes his source data, being careful to show where its shortcomings are and to illustrate his reasons for choosing that particular set of input data. He is honest about the conclusions he draws too - There are only two valid conclusions for most analytical statistics applied to seeking a corellation between apparently distinct data series, you can either say "We are n% confident that a relationship exists" and then go on to analyse it further or you can say "We cannot show a relationship between X and Y." Unlike most bad analysis this author does not take that latter case and claim it proves there is no relationship. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and this author should be applauded for not falling into this trap.
In short, it appears that an effort has been made here to apply statistics properly and under such circumstances the conclusions drawn are less likely to be BS. Just because a statistical calculation is involved doesnt make the answer wrong or the analyst dishonest.
I had a
Oh, stop gloating... there are many of us sitting here, wasting our corporations' valuable time and bandwidth surfing Slashdot, who don't have the freaking option to install or use anything other than IE.
I mean, seriously, are you suggesting that we actually get work done and do our surfing at home? Please!
No relation to Happy Monkey
My take? The article is a troll. But by the time everyone reads it and reports that the contents are bull, the author has what he wanted: a nice, tidy pile of ad impressions (the majority of the web users don't have popup blocking capabilities).
*sigh*
I quote from the article:
What, is this guy crazy? Of course CDs are luxury items! When I was flush with my phat geek paycheck, I was buying CDs like there was no tomorrow. When I got laid off last year, what do you think one of the first things I stopped buying was? CDs, of course! I can live without the latest White Stripes CD, I can't live without making my mortgage payment and buying food.