Reale, Emanuela --- "Copyright in the digital age: opportunities and drawbacks for scientific research" [2002] ELECD 60; in Towse, Ruth (ed), "Copyright in the Cultural Industries" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Copyright in the Cultural Industries

Editor(s): Towse, Ruth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840646610

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Copyright in the digital age: opportunities and drawbacks for scientific research

Author(s): Reale, Emanuela

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

15. Copyright in the digital age:
opportunities and drawbacks for
scientific research
Emanuela Reale

15.1 COPYRIGHT AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
The national science system - that is, the set of all the institutions,
organizations and laboratories that perform research activity - is an essential
component of the so-called `culture industry', and contributes, like other
economic activities, to the creation of the nation's wealth.
Public institutions - universities and public research institutes in particular
- are also characterized by the fact that, on account of their institutional nature,
the results and innovations they produce are normally disseminated to the
public freely. This means that the pursuit of profit through the economic use
of results is not one of the fundamental objectives of such institutions.1 This
approach, in which differences in conduct between public and private research
depend on the national identity of their players, is countered by that of national
innovation systems, which focus attention not on the single player but on
collective players, considering the greater or lesser propensity to appropriate
results as the distinctive element of the different networks. Following the
pattern of national innovation systems, therefore, the stress is laid not on
whether subjects belong to the public or private sphere, but on the degree to
which they are prepared to circulate knowledge (for which specific science
policy provisions ought to be made).2 Empirical evidence on the Italian
science system does not allow us at the moment to establish the prevalence of
one approach on the other.3
...