Does copyright affect reuse? : evidence from the Google Books Digitization Project
Name
913794962-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
4.61 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
719d95ad34c41b987b6a9ed68e8b8bac
Author(s)
Nagaraj, Abhishek
Advisor(s)
Scott Stern.
Date Issued
2014
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
While digitization projects like Google Books have dramatically increased access to digital content, in this study I show how the ability to reuse such information and deliver value to end-users depends crucially on features of copyright law. I use the digitization of both copyrighted and non-copyrighted issues of one publication digitized under Google Books, Baseball Digest, to measure the impact of copyright on a prominent venue for reuse: Wikipedia. I find that digitization causes a significant increase in content on Wikipedia pages, but copyright hurts both the extent of reuse and thereby the level of internet traffic to affected Wikipedia pages. Specific features of copyright law like "fair use" produce nuanced effects: the impact of copyright is more pronounced for images compared to text and becomes economically significant only post-digitization.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Management Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 49-53).
Subjects
Sloan School of Management.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
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