Congressional Budget Office Report: Copyright Issues in Digital Media

The Congressional Budget Office has just released a report, Copyright Issues in Digital Media. According to the report's summary, Congress has three options with regard to the current situation regarding copyright:

• Congress would do nothing and allow market forces to work ("forebearance"). This option would depend on the effective development and implementation of DRM technologies.
• Congress would be to use compulsory licensing to set a price for certain types of creative works. E.g., imposing a tax on computers and using that revenue to may royalties to copyright holders.
• Congress would be to revise copyright law in favor of one of the groups whose interests are at stake in the copyright debate: the copyright owners or the users of copyrighted material. 'Allowing copyright owners to have too much control could exacerbate the compromised efficiency that some differential pricing schemes can create in the presence of weak competitive pressures......Revising copyright law in favor of consumers, in contrast, could lead to inefficiency by making differential pricing less feasible."