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Abstract

Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 207-220 (2014)

“Protection of Publishers Rights in e-Books: An Economic Analysis of Neighboring Rights”
Reiko Aoki (Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University), Yasuhiro Arai (Faculty of Humanities and Economics, Kochi University)

We analyze neighboring rights which are under consideration as a change in copyright law to promote electronic publishing. If publishers are allocated neighboring rights similar to copyright protection, they will be able to reach publishing agreements with electronic book providers, just as the authors are able to license. We compare performance of several business models that would be possible under such a legal regime.
We show that such a legal change can improve social welfare but this would come at a cost of less profit for both authors and publishers. We then show that if current copyright protection is expanded to include electronic publishing, it is better to have the authors retain the right for electronic book publishing than having the publishers engage in both paper and electronic publishing.