The winds of change: digital technologies trading information and managing intellectual property rights.

The paper will investigate how the management of intellectual property rights will affect the shaping of the newly emerging global and digital market place. The relevant question to be dealt with is: how can we understand the transformation in the content/copyright industries (as a consequence of technical change, sectoral convergence, and international deregulation) and the newly emerging patterns of competition in the digital/global era? Besides giving an overview of the traditional organization of the copyright industry (from creation and collective administration of rights to content production companies, and usage), the paper will discuss the major technological, economic, political-institutional, and international challenges creators, collecting societies and 'content companies' face now and in the near future. Finally, the coordination problems between creators, collecting societies, publishers and users, and the strategic opportunities and responses of the major stakeholders in the competitive copyright industries will be analysed. Although the discussion focuses on the developments of advanced industrial economies, the impact of these developments will have implications for economies that are less 'digitally' developed.