@article{41941,
      recid = {41941},
      author = {Maurer, Stephen M.},
      title = {Digital publishing Three futures (and to get there)},
      pages = {59 pages},
      abstract = {The usual assumption that copyright rewards creativity is  a fiction. In practice, most authors earn very little  compared to their publishers. This article asks what  services, if any, publishers supply to justify these  payments.  We  argue  that  the  only  reasonable   candidate  is  search,  i.e. finding  worthwhile  titles   among  the  million  or  so  books  written  each year. For    most   of   the   20thCentury,   there   was   just   one    search technology: Human  judgment.  This  led  to  a   complex  ecosystem  of editors,   bookstore   owners,    reviewers   and   other   middlemen.   The difference   in    the   21stCentury   is   the   emergence   of   a   second  technology—“Big  Data”—that    could    make    traditional     methods obsolete.  But  in  that  case  what  new   institutions  will  implement  it? Depending on how Big  Data evolves, we can anticipate three futures. In the   first,  the  technology  never  advances  much  beyond  its   existing capabilities so that current institutions  continue in something like their present  form.  We  argue   that this is  already  an  improvement  over   mid-20thcentury publishing. At the same time, the advent of  e-readers allows new  forms  of  price  discrimination   that  could  significantly  improve economic  efficiency.   Judges  should reform the Second Circuit’s Apple decision  to make this happen. More  powerful  “Big  Data”   technologies  will  force  deeper changes.   These   will    almost   certainly   start   with   massive   vertical  integration.  Our  second  future  analyzes  the  case   where  today’s dominant  on-line  retailers  continue   expanding  up  and  downstream. Despite   obvious    concerns,   we   argue   that   clearing   away   costly  middlemen will almost certainly improve social welfare on  net. We also consider  an  alternate  future  in  which   today’s  dominant  publishers preempt  retailers  by   creating  an  open  search  platform.  Taking  search  outside traditional proprietary models can radically  improve consumer welfare,  but  only  if  legislators  are   prepared  to  make  correspondingly large adjustments to  copyright law. Finally, we ask which of our three futures  is most likely. We argue that  Big  Data  algorithms  are   inherently  voracious,  so  that  the  future belongs  to   whichever  institutions  collect  the  biggest  and  most   useful datasets.  We  identify  the  conditions  under   which  proprietary  solutions can  outperform  open  source   and  vice  versa.  The  article  concludes  by asking   what  judges  and  policymakers  should  do  to  create  a   level playing  field  so  that  the  most  efficient   institutions  really  do  emerge  if and when technology  makes them possible.},
      url = {http://tind.wipo.int/record/41941},
}