Abstract

International and domestic copyright law reform around the world is increasingly focused on how copyright exceptions and other forms of “user rights” should be expanded to promote maximum innovation, creativity, and access to knowledge in the digital age. These efforts are guided by a relatively rich theoretical literature. However, few empirical studies explore the social and economic impact of expanding user rights in the digital era. One reason for this gap has been the absence of a tool measuring the key independent variable – changes in copyright user rights over time and between countries. We are developing such a tool, which we call the “User Rights Database.” This paper describes the methodology used to create the Database and the results of initial empirical tests using it. We find that all of the countries in our study are trending toward more “open” copyright user rights over time – their copyright laws allow a more unauthorized uses of copyrighted works. However, we find a development gap in the openness because the wealthy countries in our sample are about thirty years ahead of developing countries on this measure. Our empirical tests find positive relationships between more open user rights and innovative activities in information and communication