The Social Science Research Council has a seemingly excellent 440-page report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. It has an interesting license for the electronic version:
- US$8 for non-commercial use in high-income countries—a list that for the present purposes includes the USA, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel, Singapore, and several of the Persian Gulf States (Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, and Bahrain), but not Canada.
- Free for non-commercial use outside the above-listed high-income countries.
- US$2000 for commercial use, defined as use by businesses that realize financial gain from film, music, software, or publishing, and/or the enforcement of copyrights thereof, with annual revenues greater than US$1 million. Volume licensing is available.
They later clarified the license to define journalism as non-commercial activity and reserve a free copy for Chris Dodd.
You may interpret this license as a comment on copyright, piracy and intellectual “property”, but I see it as a dig at Canada and heartily approve.
I did pay the $8. I’ll report back when I have read the report.