Does the Japanese rental system of music CDs adversely affect their sale?

"The Japanese rental system, established through negotiations among the interested parties, had not been subjected to economic analysis prior to this study. This paper found that rentals did not have an adverse effect on CD sales. Inf the results derived from the top 300 rental CDs in 2005 are applied to the entire music market, it would be preferable for the music industry to consider rental stores ans just another channel. In this case, the optimal copyright fees that generate the maximum total revenues need to be investigated as the next step. [...] A wide range of copyright issues such as piracy, remain to be resolved. This empirical study is the first step toward an economic analysis of the Japanese copyright system." [Information des Anbieters]