Economic Policymaking in the Cultural Sector; On the Effects of Copyright Regulatory Policy on Iranian Literary Writers’ Income

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

PhD in Cultural Policymaking; Member of ACEI (International Association of Cultural Economics)

Abstract

The oldest regulatory policy in the cultural sector is the Authors’ Protection (Copyright) Law whose development and implementation dates back to more than fifty years ago. The economic impacts of this policy, however, have rarely been the subject of research.
The conceptual framework of this study has been based on key copyright economics research dealing with copyrights as economic incentives (Watt, 2013, Towse, 2001). The research method follows a quantitative approach and a survey design. The sample included 91 literary writers which were randomly selected from among 586 writers. Categorization, coding, and data analysis were performed using SPSS 23 software program, and the techniques employed for analyzing the data were multiple linear regression and non-parametric correlation.
The findings reveal that copyright earnings are very low among Iranian literary writers, constituting a maximum of 4% of their average creative income. Multiple-job-holding increases as the copyright income decreases. The result of the multiple linear regression showed that the variable “breach of contracts” has a direct and negative effect on the copyright income. The model also shows that if the “breach of contract,” were to decrease one more level, the copyright income would increase by around 124 percent. The variable “number of books translated to other languages” showed a direct positive effect on the copyright income, as with each translated book the copyright income would rise by 175 percent. Overall, it can be concluded that although the connection between variables and the direction of influence have been in alignment with the policymaker’s intention, the influence has been insignificant.

Keywords

References

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new economy and trad
Volume 16, Issue 3
March 2022
Pages 87-103

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History

  • Receive Date: 07 October 2021
  • Revise Date: 08 December 2021
  • Accept Date: 21 January 2022

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