[p2p-research] The "fair use economy" is enormous, growing, and endangered by the relativel...

[Kevin Carson]

  Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader: The "fair use economy"
is enormous, growing, and endangered by the relatively tiny
entertainment industry via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 4/27/10
The IT industry's US lobby group has released a report calculating the
size of the "fair use economy" in the US -- all the businesses that
rely on fair use, including web hosting companies, private schools,
search engines and many others. The total for 2007 (the last year for
which stats are available) is a whopping $4.7 trillion -- one sixth of
US GDP -- with over 17 million people employed.
The report is a counterpoint to those crazy Hollywood stats that show
that every job in America will disappear unless copyright is extended
to infinity, all network connections are surveilled, and every
infringer is fined her entire net worth and stuck in jail.
Industries benefiting from fair use have grown dramatically within the
past 20 years, and their growth has had a profound impact on the U.S.
economy.8 The development and spread of the Internet as a medium for
both business and personal use has been creative and transforma- tive.
The creation of new businesses (e.g., Google and Amazon) and business
activities has in turn fueled demand from other sectors of the U.S.
economy (e.g., fiber optics, routers and consumer electronics) and
transformed a host of business processes (e.g., communications and
procurement).
The advent of the Internet and networking technology also has been
widely credited with reviving U.S. productivity growth after
two-decades of below-trend productivity.9 As higher productivity is an
important source of income to labor and capital resources, the "new
economy" has helped spur overall growth and offset structural declines
in other sectors of the economy.

FAIR USE IN THE U.S. ECONOMY (PDF) (Thanks, Ryan!) Previously:
- Fair use industries returned $4.5 trillion to the US in 2006 ...
- India's copyright bill gets it right
- Surowiecki on the "anticommons problem" -- The Gridlock Economy ...
- US makes Korea eliminate fair use
- US Copyright Czar wants your thoughts on how to measure and
reduce ...




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