Introduction to the seminar:

Government should firmly resist over-regulation of activities which do not prejudice the central objective of copyright, namely the provision of incentives to creators. (Recommendation 5, Hargreaves Review 2011).
Legislative intervention limiting the scope of copyright is only appropriate where owners are unable to enforce their rights. Where transaction costs between owners and users become low enough for negotiations to occur, exceptions should dissapear. This latter argument is often attributed to Wendy Gordon's 1982 paper: "Fair Use as Market Failure", but disputed. Who is right? And does empirical evidence contribute to answering this? These questions are central in this seminar.

Prof. dr. Martin Kretschmer is professor in Intellectual Propery Law in the Law School, University of Glasgow, and director of CREATe,center for copyright and new business models in the creative economy. He is an internationally renowned expert in the economic analysis of IP issues, including the genealogy of the norms governing an information society - see http://www.copyrighthistory.org/.