TY  - JOUR
AU  - Danaher, Brett
AU  - Smith, Michael D
AU  - Telang, Rahul
TI  - Piracy and Copyright Enforcement Mechanisms
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19150
PY  - 2013
Y2  - June 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19150
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19150
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19150.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Brett Danaher
Chapman University
1 University Dr
Orange, CA 92866
E-Mail: danaher@chapman.edu

Michael D. Smith
Carnegie Mellon University
E-Mail: mds@cmu.edu

Rahul Telang
Carnegie Mellon University
4800 Forbes ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
E-Mail: rtelang@andrew.cmu.edu
M1  - published as Brett Danaher, Michael D. Smith, Rahul Telang. "Piracy and Copyright Enforcement Mechanisms," in Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, editors, "Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 14" University of Chicago Press (2014)

M3  - presented at "Innovation Policy and the Economy 2013", April 23, 2013
AB  - Much debate exists around the impact that illegal file sharing may have on the creative industries. Similarly, opinions differ regarding whether the producers of artistic works should be forced to accept any weakening of intellectual property rights resulting from illegal file sharing, or if governments should intervene to protect these rights. This chapter seeks to inform these questions by outlining what we do and do not know from existing academic research.

We first discuss whether filesharing displaces sales of media goods and then discuss whether such displacement will lead to reduced incentives to produce new creative works. We continue by summarizing recent findings on what businesses can do to compete with piracy and the effectiveness of anti-piracy interventions on encouraging consumers to migrate from illegal to legal consumption channels. We conclude by demonstrating that without additional empirical evidence, it will be difficult to determine the socially optimal set of strategies and government copyright policies in the digital era.
ER  -