In what I think is becoming an annual tradition, I’m pleased to announce that we will be adding a new academic research presentation to the agenda at Copyright and Technology NYC 2017. Prof. Imke Reimers of Northeastern University in Boston will present a paper called “Can Private Copyright Protection Be Effective? Evidence from Book Publishing,” which was just published in the University of Chicago Press’s Journal of Law and Economics.

This is peer-reviewed research into the impact of copyright monitoring on sales of trade e-books, which gives us some insight into the level of infringement online.  Prof. Reimers reviewed data from RosettaBooks, a leading independent publisher.  RosettaBooks used online copyright monitoring (from Digimarc) on some of its titles during certain periods, and she was able to use sales data to determine the impact that copyright protection had on sales of those titles.  Spoiler alert: she found a lower bound of 14% increase in sales.

I’ll have more to say about this in the near future, but for now, you can see her present this research at our conference, which is coming up on Tuesday January 24.