This essay deals with the Italian legislative framework for access to cultural heritage and its interaction with copyright laws on books and other material that reproduces artworks. A system of authorization by multiple actors and by the decentralized offices of the ministry for cultural heritage can make access harder and jeopardize the fruition of such material by researchers, thus resulting in an underutilization of Italian's cultural heritage
Tragedy of the anticommons is the logical reciprocal to the better-known tragedy of the commons. It is generally characterized as a legal regime in which multiple owners hold rights of exclusion over a resource in demand. The resource cannot be put into use without a bundling of approvals from the various separate owners, yet bundling entails serious bargaining complications resulting in systematic Pareto underutilization. Nevertheless, we argue, the anticommons concept often has been employed without consistency and appropriate precision. Illustrations come primarily from the writings of Michael Heller, whose oft-cited work has been central to the anticommons literature. This paper presents a simple version of the formal anticommons model and demonstrates that relevant applications can be constructed with uniformity and analytic rigor.
The anticommons in knowledge is distinct from the anticommons in physical objects. The former is always tragic, the latter not necessarily so. For society at large, the tragedy of the anticommons is more serious when it involves knowledge than when it involves physical resources. Buchanan and Yoon's (2000) formal model of the anticommons is incorrect even within the neoclassical context, and their neoliberal suggestion that single ownership is the socially optimal solution to the tragedy of the knowledge anticommons is misleading. This article argues that the only, epistemically and socially beneficial solution to the tragedy of the knowledge anticommons is to create, expand, and protect the knowledge commons. The article also constructs a simple formal model based on Bessen and Maskin's (2006) sequential model, as a metaphor for how the comedy of the knowledge commons works. The analysis supports the worldwide movement for free knowledge, and dissents from the evolving political and academic consensus in China in favor of more restrictive intellectual property regimes.
Abstract The process of administrative decentralization of the education system in Romania proceeded in chaotic steps. It was done under the pressure, on one hand, of the EU integration requirements and, on the other hand, of the local administrations who wanted more control over how their money were used in the schools and of the parents committees that wanted to have a say in the local schools. The road was scattered with new reform legislations coming with every change in government composition and ministers. The result was a combination of local autonomy and central control that had the potential to produce confusion and conflict. The multiple and complex blend of divided responsibilities and powers turned out in the process of setting up the new form or entry grade in the Romanian primary education cycle in a rational strategic play scholarly designated as anticommons. Each separated actor tries to obtain a maximizing share of the cooperatively generated benefit for a minimum possible cost. The interactions are modeled as a Game of Chicken where, because actors calculate separately, each selects a higher price/lower quantity position than is optimal, resulting in a lower net payoff both individually and collectively.
The patent system is one part of the triad of intellectual property, besieged by technological progress, globalisation and political criticism. In addition to the well-known argument that patents have unwanted moral or ecological consequences because they function, an immanent argument gains ground in the economic debate that they actually do not work as intended. In complex technologies such as biology, computers and software, the argument goes, patents tend to create a "tragedy of the anticommons", stifling capitalist development.
Um die Triade des geistigen Eigentums - Urheberrechte, Patente und eingetragene Warenzeichen - gibt es zur Zeit - bedingt durch die neuen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien - heftige Auseinandersetzungen. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der zunehmend dezidierten Kritik in der Ökonomik am herrschenden kapitalistischen Patentrecht, das entgegen der landläufigen Meinung mit seiner Monopolisierung von Wissen innovationshemmend ist. Das Dilemma beschreibt der Autor wie folgt: Auf der einen Seite weist vieles darauf hin, dass die "Landnahme und Einzäunung" des intellektuellen Eigentums die Kreativität der kapitalistischen Entwicklung knebelt. Auf der anderen Seite hatten die groß angelegten Versuche wenig Erfolg, ohne Einzäunung intellektueller und künstlerischer Werte dennoch Profite in der New Economy zu erzielen. Insgesamt stellen die milliardenschweren Urheberrechts-Portofolios jedoch einen überwältigenden Sachzwang dar, so dass es fast niemand wagt, das System als Ganzes in Frage zu stellen. (ICA)
