| Sumario: | In this article, the writer makes a three-fold contribution to the economic analysis of copyright. First, she distinguishes between the general purpose of copyright law and the administration of the royalty system of payment for the use of copyrighted material, thereby leading to the principal-agent analysis of modes of payment. She then applies this approach to the specific issue of the change in copyright law in the form of the introduction of a new property right for performers in the U.K., which has come about as a result of the harmonization program of the European Union. Finally, taking the music industry as a case study, she gathers new data to evaluate the likely effect that this change in law would have on performers' earnings. She asserts that her approach is novel, in that there has been no prior effort to apply empirical evidence to the analysis of copyright law; and she therefore asserts that her analysis offers a framework for assessing changes to copyright law.
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