The exhaustion principle in copyright and modern digital markets

Bronwyn E. Howell and Petrus H. Potgieter

33rd European Regional ITS Conference, Edinburgh, 2025: Digital innovation and transformation in uncertain times from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)

Abstract: The exhaustion principle, or first-sale doctrine, limits copyright holders' control after the authorised sale of a tangible copy, enabling resale, lending, and preservation. In digital markets, however, this principle has largely become irrelevant, as distribution models now rely on licences that prevent secondary use. This paper examines how the disappearance of copyright exhaustion affects four key digital markets – books, music, video, and software – along six dimensions: access, preservation, privacy, transactional clarity, user innovation, and platform competition. Drawing on a structured review of legal and economic literature, it assesses both the erosion of these benefits and possible remedies, including forward-and-delete technologies, common law exhaustion, relaxed anti-circumvention rules, and enhanced fair use provisions for libraries. The study argues that digital distribution has shifted the balance of rights too far towards copyright holders and that differentiated regulatory reforms may be needed to restore a socially beneficial equilibrium that preserves both market efficiency and user rights.

Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cul, nep-law and nep-reg
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/331276/1/ITS-E-2025-31.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:itse25:331276

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 33rd European Regional ITS Conference, Edinburgh, 2025: Digital innovation and transformation in uncertain times from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().