Business Models and Authors' Rights in the Information Economy

Abstract

This paper will discuss some special features of the information economy. The information economy is based on information products and services, whereas the traditional economy is based on farming, industrial production of material goods, and labour-intensive services. The information economy is sometimes claimed to be a completely new economy, governed by other economic laws than the traditional economy. This is not true. However, there are some cost parameters that have changed drastically in the information economy. For example, the Internet has lowered the marginal cost for reproduction and distribution of information products to almost zero. This makes it difficult for producers of information products to combine an attractive price for the products, while recovering high development costs. Some companies, e.g. Google, have successfully introduced new business models adapted to the new needs. Many other companies in the information economy, e.g. media companies and publishers, still need to innovate and improve their business models. There are also needs for changes and innovations in legislation, especially in the field of copyright and authors rights, where the damaging effects to society of the monopoly powers granted by the existing laws have become apparent. New legislation should focus more on the needs of authors and customers, and less on the wishes of business-people involved in the processes between the authors and the customers. Open access and open source are two interesting new concepts and business models for intellectual products (scientific papers and software, respectively), which seem to have great potentials for the future development of the information economy.