Fair use and fair competition for digitized cultural goods: the case of eBooks

Abstract

This paper investigates the main characteristics of the eBook market at the beginning of the 2010s. Although just emerging in Europe, the eBook market is much more developed in the USA, thanks to the launch of the Amazon Kindle in 2007 in addition to other tablets. It argues that the peculiarities of the eBook market lead to unfair competition between internet giants (especially Google and Amazon) and publishers. The paper outlines the legal and economic tools put forward in order to justify economic strategies in this field: fair use in the case of Google, lower prices for consumers in the case of Amazon. The paper focuses explicitly on the boundaries of competition policies in order to raise fair competition for digitized cultural industries.