Definition
Digital piracy is the act of reproducing, using, or distributing information products, in digital formats and/or using digital technologies, without the authorization of their legal owners.
Introduction
The objective of this entry is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of digital piracy (this entry summarizes and updates Belleflamme and Peitz (2012)). Although we put the emphasis on the economic analysis, we also briefly present the legal context and its recent evolution. As digital piracy consists in infringing intellectual property laws, it is important to start by understanding the rationale of such laws. That allows us to define more precisely what is meant by digital piracy. We can then move to the economic analysis of piracy. We start with the basic analysis, which explains why piracy is likely to decrease the profits of the producers of digital products; we also examine how the producers have reacted to digital piracy when it started to grow. We review...
References
Aguiar L, Martens B (2013) Digital music consumption on the Internet: evidence from Clickstream data. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Digital Economy Working Paper, 2013/04. European Commission Joint Research Centre. Seville, Spain
Arnold MA, Darmon E, Dejean S, Pénard T (2014) Graduated response policy and the behavior of digital pirates: evidence from the French three-strike (Hadopi) law. Mimeo. University of Delaware, Newark DE
Belleflamme P, Peitz M (2012) Digital piracy: theory. In: Peitz M, Waldfogel J (eds) The Oxford handbook of the digital economy. Oxford University Press, New York
Danaher B, Smith MD (2013) Gone in 60 seconds: the impact of the Megaupload shutdown on movie sales. Mimeo. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Danaher B, Smith MD, Telang R, Chen S (2014) The effect of graduated response anti- piracy laws on music sales: evidence from an event study in France. J Ind Econ
Johnson WR (1985) The economics of copying. J Polit Econ 93:158–174
Koh B, Murthi BPS, Raghunathan S (2013) Shifting demand: online music piracy, physical music sales, and digital music sales. J Organ Comput Electron Commer
Mortimer JH, Nosko C, Sorenson A (2012) Supply responses to digital distribution: recorded music and live performances. Inf Econ Policy 24:3–14
Novos I, Waldman M (1984) The effects of increased copyright protection: an analytic approach. J Polit Econ 92:236–246
Novos I, Waldman M (2013) Piracy of intellectual property: past, present, and future. Rev Econ Res Copyr Issues 10:1–26
Peitz M, Waelbroeck P (2006) Why the music industry may gain from free downloading – the role of sampling. Int J Ind Organ 24:907–913
Peukert C, Claussen J, Kretschmer T (2013) Piracy and movie revenues: evidence from Megaupload: a tale of the long tail? Mimeo. LMU Munich, Munich, Germany
Waelbroeck P (2013) Digital music: economic perspectives. In: Towse R, Handke C (eds) Handbook of the digital creative economy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham
Waldfogel J (2012a) Digital piracy: empirics. In: Peitz M, Waldfogel J (eds) The Oxford handbook of the digital economy. Oxford University Press, New York
Waldfogel J (2012b) Copyright protection, technological change, and the quality of new products: evidence from recorded music since Napster. J Law Econ 55:715–740
Zhang L (2013) Intellectual property strategy and the long tail: evidence from the recorded music industry. Mimeo. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Belleflamme, P., Peitz, M. (2014). Digital Piracy. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_13-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_13-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7883-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Digital Piracy- Published:
- 19 August 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_13-2
-
Original
Digital Piracy- Published:
- 13 June 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_13-1