Michael A. Carrier is the recipient of a Google Research Award.
CAMDEN — Michael A. Carrier, a professor of law at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden, is the recipient of a Google Research Award that will help him investigate the effect the decision to shut down Napster had on digital music innovation.
The Google Research Awards program aims to identify and support world-class, full-time faculty pursuing research in areas of mutual interest to Google.
Carrier will conduct interviews with innovators and venture capitalists to determine the effect the Napster decision had on their own innovations.
“Napster was an early peer-to-peer service, and the Napster decision was important because it was the first time a court had found that a peer-to-peer service infringed the copyright laws,” Carrier says. “As such, it offers a natural experiment by which I hope to trace the effect of the decision on innovation and investment in digital music.”
Napster is an online music store originally founded as a peer-to-peerfile sharing Internet service. Users of the digital music pioneer were able to share music files electronically. However, questions of copyright infringement surrounded the company and district and appeals court decisions forced it to cease operations. It is now owned by Rhapsody.
Carrier says no one has yet traced direct effects of copyright enforcement on innovation.
“The debate today is centered on piracy, theft, and copyright infringement,” he says. “But this focus drowns out the innovation effects of copyright enforcement. I hope to add to the piracy and innovation debate by offering concrete evidence of innovation effects.”
Carrier, a Philadelphia resident, teaches intellectual property, antitrust, and property law at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden. He is a co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law and the author of Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law (Oxford University Press, 2009, paperback 2011).
The law scholar is also the editor of Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law: Competition (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), and has written more than 35 book chapters and law review articles in journals including the Stanford, Michigan, Penn, and Duke law reviews.
Carrier earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his Juris Doctor from University of Michigan Law School.
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Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
(856) 225-6759
E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu
