2008 Woodie Awards
Berkman Center receives $600,000 digital media grant
Largest grant in history of six year program launches three year project
Adina Levine
Issue date: 11/6/03 Section: News
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The Berkman Center for Internet and Society received its largest research grant to date from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for $600,000 for its Digital Media Project. The Garner/G2 and the Soros Foundation have offered additional support to this three-year project, which is exploring the future of copyright law in a globally digitized environment.
"It is so important because the outcome of this crisis has huge ramifications for the way in which the internet develops and the way in which intellectual property develops," asserted John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center. "In an economy that becomes more and more global, it's a problem that's only getting trickier and more and more interesting with time."
"The music industry is currently in crisis," commented Harvard law Professor William Fisher, principal investigator of the project. "Since 1999, both domestic and global sales have been falling at an accelerating pace."
Fisher continued, "One source of the problem . . . is that unauthorized reproduction and distribution of sound recordings over the Internet has increasingly eroded demand for CDs and other authorized recordings. The scale of this practice is remarkable. As Wendy Seltzer (a Berkman Center fellow) recently pointed out, more Americans have downloaded music from the Internet without permission than voted for President Bush. The film industry has not yet been hit so hard. But as the size of hard drives continues to increase, broadband Internet access becomes more widely available, and compression systems improve, it will likely suffer the same fate."
The Digital Media Project will explore five different scenarios regarding the future of copyright law in a digital age. In consonance with Fisher's upcoming book, "Promises to Keep," set to be published in Spring 2004, the analysis of the five different scenarios will examine the economical, business-related, and legal or regulatory repercussions of each given model.
"It is so important because the outcome of this crisis has huge ramifications for the way in which the internet develops and the way in which intellectual property develops," asserted John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center. "In an economy that becomes more and more global, it's a problem that's only getting trickier and more and more interesting with time."
"The music industry is currently in crisis," commented Harvard law Professor William Fisher, principal investigator of the project. "Since 1999, both domestic and global sales have been falling at an accelerating pace."
Fisher continued, "One source of the problem . . . is that unauthorized reproduction and distribution of sound recordings over the Internet has increasingly eroded demand for CDs and other authorized recordings. The scale of this practice is remarkable. As Wendy Seltzer (a Berkman Center fellow) recently pointed out, more Americans have downloaded music from the Internet without permission than voted for President Bush. The film industry has not yet been hit so hard. But as the size of hard drives continues to increase, broadband Internet access becomes more widely available, and compression systems improve, it will likely suffer the same fate."
The Digital Media Project will explore five different scenarios regarding the future of copyright law in a digital age. In consonance with Fisher's upcoming book, "Promises to Keep," set to be published in Spring 2004, the analysis of the five different scenarios will examine the economical, business-related, and legal or regulatory repercussions of each given model.