Scale Free Law: Network Science and Copyright Andrés Guadamuz González AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law

Raising Leviathan? Or what do Newton, Hobbes and Smith have in common?

Random social networks

Scale-free social networks

Distributions “ Bell” Distributions Power Law Distributions

Random and scale-free networks

The Internet

Normal topologies

Scale-free topologies

Characteristics of scale-free networks Connectedness: “Six degrees of separation” Accumulation of links: “the rich get richer” Hyper-accumulation of links: “the winner takes all” Pareto distribution: 80-20 rule Tipping points, cascading effects, mob behaviour Robustness: resilient to random attacks Potential vulnerability if super hubs are removed

Connectedness: “Six degrees of separation”

Accumulation of links: “the rich get richer”

Hyper-accumulation of links: “the winner takes all”

Pareto distribution: 80-20 rule

Tipping points, cascading effects, mob behaviour

Robustness: resilient to random attacks

Potential vulnerability if super hubs are removed

Six degrees of interdisciplinary collaborations

Six degrees of… sexual contacts?

Six degrees of… yeast proteins?

Long tail economics

What about copyright law? Infringement liability: “Six degrees of separation” Policy: Long tail economics P2P enforcement: Network robustness Copyright licensing: Tail-end creative works will tend to favour “open” licensing models.

Infringement liability: “Six degrees of separation”

Policy: Long tail economics

P2P enforcement: Network robustness

Copyright licensing: Tail-end creative works will tend to favour “open” licensing models.

ISP: Six degrees of one web sites

New copyright policies for the long tail

P2P is good for the tail Source: David Blackburn, Online Piracy and Recorded Music Sales (2004) 165,054 133,983 99% 47,357 45,255 95% 26,934 26,531 90% 9,831 10,110 75% 2,851 2,852 50% 745 757 25% 277 281 10% 166 170 5% 70 73 1% Sales with 30% less file-sharing Actual Sales Percentile

P2P network map

Cascading failures

Networks operate in a deterministic manner

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