Vol. 3 (2007)
A Collective Rights Society For The Digital Age
John Maloney
Variations in digital copyright law in the international sphere have created unnecessary transaction costs to both consumers and producers who wish to transfer digital media efficiently. This article argues that the international community should create a collective rights organisation to bring uniformity, fairness, and efficiency to the process of transferring digital media and endeavours to construct the ideal model for such a collective rights organisation by describing a hypothetical collective rights organisation named PICRO (Possible International Collective Rights Organisation) and examining its operation using the example of digital music distribution. By illustrating the PICRO model in the light of current trends in international digital copyright law, the article aims to highlight the advantages of the proposed new system while underscoring the inherent weaknesses of having different digital copyright laws for different territories.
Author
J.D. ’07, Florida State University. The author would like to thank Jason Struble for his help in editing this paper. This article was originally published in the Journal of Transnational Law and Policy