Abstract
Piracy has been one of the most flamboyant topics in the legal and economic literature of the last two decades. The increased importance assigned to copyright in national economies determined the imposing of this issue as one of the leading voices in the exports of many developed countries. However, the impact of several disruptive innovations (such as the internet and all its related technologies) has weakened the original role of copyright, thus stimulating a wide scholarly literature. While the core of this stream of literature has in general considered consumers like potential infringers and tried to check the impact of piracy on sales and industry profits, a few papers have considered the behavioral perspective. This aspect becomes crucial if one wants to take consumers’ viewpoint into account, while studying the inner factors that led them to infringe copyright. Yet, behavioral law and economics literature teaches us that beside any normative claims, the individuals’ compliance to the law depends on a complex interaction of factors including risk perception, size of sanctions, psychological determinants, and cultural values which jointly determine the social norms that must be properly understood in order to make efficient laws. If a handful of papers have already tried to gain insights on consumers’ behavior in western countries, the issue is still largely neglected in many countries in the rest of the world. This paper takes advantage of a survey conducted through field research in four Asian countries, (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam) in order to provide an innovative picture of consumers’ behavior and sketch out some more general policy implications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
An information good, according to a consolidated economic literature, is a commodity whose value depends on the information it contains and that in general is protected by copyright, such as a book, a cd, a dvd, a software, etc. (Shapiro and Varian 1998).
Although the legal monopoly entitled by copyright does not automatically translate into an economic monopoly for the right owner, its rationale is to reward the successful copyrighted works with substantial market power. For an in-depth discussion please refer to Ramello (2003).
It is worth noting that the music cassettes were introduced by the same industrial group (Royal Dutch Philips) owner of one of the five major producing music recording, the Polygram and its affiliated labels. Likewise a significant number of patents for procuring CD burners are owned by Sony, another of the major recording companies. The mentioned industrial groups were of course very much aware of the potential use of the hardware sold in the consumer market Silva and Ramello 2000).
Like in the case of Western copyright, Chinese authorities were very much concerned about controlling and filtering what was published and then widely distributed. Hence in both case legal measures were rooted to censorship (Alford 1995).
In a sufficiently broad timespan the interplay between law—including its enforcement and sanctions—and social norms can have dynamic effects on behaviors that however are not studied in the this article, focused only on a static view (on this Ref. Mulder 2018).
The Pirate Part is a political movement born in Sweden in 2006 and has spread all around the word. Among others, its program includes a substantial reform of copyright and intellectual property current regimes.
In most cultures “imitation” has played a fundamental role in education (Warnick 2008). This makes sometime blurred the boundaries between the positive evaluation of imitation and the negative evaluation of copying substantially.
References
Alexander, P. J. (1994). New technology and market structure: Evidence from the music recording industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 18, 113–123.
Alford, W. J. (1995). To steal a book is an elegant offence. Intellectual property in Chinese civilization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Alm, J., & Torgler, B. (2011). Do ethics matter? Tax compliance and morality. Journal of Business Ethics, 101(4), 635–651.
Belleflamme, P., & Peitz, M. (2019). Digital piracy. In A. Marciano & G. B. Ramello (Eds.), Encyclopedia of law and economics (pp. 553–565). New York: Springer.
Breyer, S. (1970). The uneasy case for copyright: A study of copyright in books, photocopies and computer programs. Harvard Law Review, 84, 281–351.
Burke, P. (2000). The social history of knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chiang, E., & Assané, D. (2007). Determinants of music copyright violations on the university campus. Journal of Cultural Economics, 31, 187–204.
Chiang, E., & Assané, D. (2008). Gender differences in music piracy among students on the university campus: Do males and females react differently? Journal of Socio-Economics, 37, 1371–1380.
Cohen, & Levinthal, (1990). Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 128–152.
Conner, K. R., & Rumelt, R. P. (1991). Software piracy—An analysis of protection strategies. Management Science, 37, 125–139.
Di Liddo, A. (2018). Does counterfeiting benefit genuine manufacturer? The role of production costs. European Journal of Law and Economics, 45, 81–125.
Dollar, D., Fisman, R., & Gatti, R. (2001). Are women really the “fairer” sex? Corruption and women in government. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 46, 423–429.
Domon, K. (2018). An economic analysis of intellectual property rights infringement. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Feldman, Y., & Nadler, J. (2006). The law and norms of file sharing. San Diego Law Review, 43, 577–618.
Ganea, P., & Hajun, J. (2009). China. In P. Goldstein & J. Straus (Eds.) Intellectual property in Asia. Berlin: Springer.
Ganea, P., & Nagaoka, S. (2009). Japan. In P. Goldstein & J. Straus (Eds.) Intellectual property in Asia. Berlin: Springer.
Geiseinger, A. (2002). A belief change theory of expressive law. Iowa Law Review, 88, 35–73.
Gordon, W. (2014). The fair use doctrine: Markets, market failure and rights of use. In R. Watt (Ed.), Handbook on the economics of copyright: A guide for students and teachers. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Jambon, M. M., & Smetana, J. G. (2012). College students’ moral evaluation of music downloading. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33, 31–39.
Johns, A. (2010). Piracy: The intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Katz, A. (2010). Copyright collectives: Good solution but for which problem? In R. C. Dreyfuss, D. L. Zimmerman, & H. First (Eds.), Working within the boundaries of intellectual property law. Innovation policy for the knowledge society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kini, R. B., Ramakrishna, H. V., & Vijayaraman, B. S. (2004). Shaping of moral intensity regarding software piracy: A comparison between Thailand and U.S. students. Journal of Business Ethics, 49, 91–104.
Kini, R. B., Rominger, A., & Vijayaraman, B. S. (2000). An empirical study of software piracy and moral intensity among university students. The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 40, 62–72.
Kwong, K. K., Yau, O. H. M., Lee, J. S. Y., Sin, L. Y. M., & Tse, A. C. B. (2003). The effects of attitudinal and demographic factors on intention to buy pirated CDs: The case of Chinese consumers. Journal of Business Ethics, 47(3), 223–235.
Leroch, M. A. (2014). Punishment as defiance: Deterrence and perverse effects in the case of expressive crime. CESifo Economics Studies, 60, 581–598.
Liebowitz, S. J. (1985). Copying and indirect appropriability: Photocopying of journals. Journal of Political Economy, 93(5), 945–957.
Litman, J. (2001). Real copyright reform. Iowa Law Review, 96, 1–55.
Litman, J. (2004). Sharing and stealing. Hastings Communication & Entarteinment Law Journal, 27, 1–50.
Maffioletti, A., & Ramello, G. B. (2004). Should we put them in jail copyright infringement. Penalties and consumer behaviour: Insights from experimental data. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 1(2), 81–95.
Manuel, P. (1993). Cassette culture. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Marciano, M., & Ramello, G. B. (2019). Introduction to the symposium on the empirics of judicial institutions. Journal of Institutional Economics, 15, 73–80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S17441374180003.
Migheli, M., & Ramello, (2018). Woman in piracy. Behavioral perspectives on copyright infringement. New York: Mimeo.
Mulder, L. B. (2018). When sanctions convey social norms. European Journal of Law and Economics, 46, 331–342.
Mullen, E., & Nadler, J. (2008). Moral spillovers: The effect of moral violations on deviant behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1239–1245.
OECD. (2015). Digital economy outlook. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Park, J. (2009). South Korea. In P. Goldstein & J. Straus (Eds.), Intellectual property in Asia. Berlin: Springer.
Phan, V. D. (2009). Vietnam. In P. Goldstein & J. Straus (Eds.), Intellectual property in Asia. Berlin: Springer.
Posner, R. (1997). Social norm and the law: An economic approach. American Economic Review, 87, 365–369.
Ramello, G. B. (2003). Copyright and antitrust issues. In W. J. Gordon & R. Watt (Eds.), The economics of copyright. Development in research and analysis. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Ryan, M. P. (1998). Knowledge diplomacy: Global competition and the politics of intellectual property. Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions Press.
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. R. (1998). Information rules: A strategic guide to the network economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Silva, F., & Ramello, G. B. (2000). Sound recording market: The ambiguous case of copyright and piracy. Industrial and Corporate Change, 9, 415–442.
Takeyama, L. N. (1994). The welfare implications of unauthorized reproduction of intellectual property in the presence of demand network externalities. Journal of Industrial Economics, 17(2), 155–165.
Waldfogel, J. (2012). Music piracy and its effects on demand, supply, and welfare. Innovation Policy and the Economy, 12, 91–110.
Warnick, B. R. (2008). Imitation and education. A philosophical inquiry into learning by example. Albany: SUNY Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
The authors are grateful to the participants to the SERCI-EPIP conference in Glasgow, the 14th International Conference of the Japan Economic Policy Association in Tokyo, the European Association for Comparative Economics Conference in Regensburg, the World Congress on Comparative Economics in Rome, to two anonymous referees and the editor Laura Rondi for the valuable comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Domon, K., Melcarne, A. & Ramello, G.B. Digital piracy in Asian countries. J. Ind. Bus. Econ. 46, 117–135 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-019-00111-3
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-019-00111-3