Authored by Urs Gasser, Mike McGuire

Introduction:

The foundational White Paper “Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,” by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and GartnerG2, explores a variety of issues surrounding the current digital media ecosystem. The White Paper examines legal and regulatory developments regarding copyright and related intellectual property (IP) issues, discusses existing business models upset by digital media distribution and emerging models newly possible, and analyzes shifts in consumer attitudes and behavior. However, the emphasis of the foundational White Paper is on the U.S. law and market.

This Supplement to the White Paper focuses on international legal issues. It considers developments regarding copyright and related rights in jurisdictions outside the United States against the backdrop of earlier Digital Media Project works that reviewed the interplay among law, technology and the business ecosystem.4 In essence, the purpose of this Supplement is threefold:

• First, it offers a broad knowledge base about international legal issues and the emerging legal framework relating to the shift from analog/offline to digital/online media.
• Second, it aims to provide a rough overview of the different paths and stages of evolution of the copyright ecosystems across three continents: Europe and the Asia/Pacific region,including Australia.
• Third, it seeks to inform stakeholders—users, right holders,business executives, intermediaries, policymakers, etc.—about basic similarities as well as conceptual differences in global and U.S. digital media laws at a time when U.S.-based services are expanding to international markets.