| The advent and progress of digital and network technologies have changed the environment surrounding copyrighted works. It allows easy copying, modification, and distribution on a larger scale, both legal and illegal. It has also empowered right-holders to control the usage of works more specifically and restrictively. These changes have brought both opportunities and threats to right-holders and users, and the legal reaction has been to respond to the threat by expanding the scope of copyright and outlawing circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) technologies. As a result, society now suffers two major problems: the problem of diminishing freedoms that were built into the copyright regime in the past, and the tragedy of the anticommons (or underuse of copyrighted works caused by holdouts among multiple right-holders). These problems unbalance the relationship between right-holders and users of copyrighted works. To articulate these new problems, this dissertation analyzes four major areas of copyright regulations and systems that show clear contrasts between the U.S. and Japan: regulations over temporary data storage in computer memory devices, legal structure of copyright exemption, regulations over DRM technologies, and registration and licensing schemes as a possible solution to the tragedy of the anticommons. The analyses presented are legal, economic, and technological. They describe regulatory differences from a legal perspective, look at the current market structures causing the problems via direct interviews and conference remarks of executives in copyright-related businesses, and discuss the characteristics of computers and technologies used in the marketing of copyrighted works. In sum, they conclude that the problems of diminishing freedom and the tragedy of the anticommons are caused by overreaching copyright regulations that cause the market to suffer, that it is difficult for the market to resolve these problems by itself, and that some of the regulations discourage system providers from making their DRM technologies comply with the regulations. At the end of each chapter, this dissertation considers possible legal choices for better-balanced copyright regulations. |
