US Proposals for Free Trade in Digital Media Products: Multilateral vs. Regional Efforts

Abstract

Professor Beat Schmid has pioneered ideas which are of crucial importance for this article: When information technology was still seen by most academics and business men as a technical revolution which allows rapid and large scale transmission of information, he already formulated very convincingly the fundamental change this new technology would have on business models and market architecture. He foresaw very clearly that the convergence of technologies (communication, TV, media for movies and music) would have profound effects on existing market structures and industry delimitation. The fact that it has become difficult to define economic transactions either as good or as service — a long debate in the WTO with far-reaching implications for the regulatory environment — will not come as a surprise to him. Research at the Institute for Media and Communications Management, which Professor Beat Schmid leads as Managing Director from its inception, has always included projects on market structure and regulatory regimes for the “new electronic world”. He was convinced that the information technology “revolution” would bring major challenges for management science and practice, as well as for the legal and economic disciplines. His call was for research and discussion that transcends traditional disciplinary demarcations.