Determinants in the online distribution of digital content: An exploratory analysis

Abstract

This article shows the phases – and discusses the results – of an empirical analysis addressing the legal business models that are adopted online to distribute digital content. Although it premised upon the idea that these models would have been greatly affected by the strong protection that digital copyright law offers to rightholders, it concluded the opposite way. The ‘all rights reserved model’ that is tenaciously incentivized by the current legislative framework is, indeed, all but dominant: it is overcome by ‘open’ and ‘interactive’ models that take full advantage from the architecture of the online environment and from flexible forms of copyright licensing. More in general, the results of the empirical analysis show that the current legal framework does not considerably affect the models of distribution that are implemented in practice; rather, they are significantly influenced by many other factors, such as the technology used for making digital content available.