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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!
"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.
Site contains multiple popups and spyware.
There's something wrong with you if most of your freshman year of college is spent looking up copyright statistics.
My freshman year was highly spent looking up statistics:
for example,
Milwaukee's Best Ice Light: 5.1% alcohol, $3.99
Natural Light Ice: 5.4% alcohol, $4.29.
I could never decide which was the better deal, but I preferred the Beast's taste and I was most like to have 4 $1 dollar bills, as opposed to 4 $1 bills and random change, so my scientific analysis dictated the Beast Ice.
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
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.