The "UsedSoft" decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) about the right of a buyer of a downloaded copy of a software to resell this copy triggered a controversial discussion about the applicability of the "exhaustion" rule (US: first-sale doctrine) to copyright-protected...

This paper quantifies the relationship between private-network file sharing activity and music sales in the BitTorrent era. Using a panel dataset of 2,251 albums' U.S. sales and file sharing downloads on a private network during 2008, I estimate the effect of file sharing on album sales....

The effects of (private, small-scale) piracy on the pricing behavior of producers of information goods are studied within a unified model of vertical differentiation. Although information goods are assumed to be perfectly differentiated, demands are interdependent because the copying technology...

I quantify the effects of private-network music sharing on aggregate album sales in the BitTorrent era using a panel of US sales and private-network downloads for 2,109 albums during 2008. Exogenous shocks to the network's sharing constraints address the simultaneity problem. In theory,...

This article investigates the relation between the level of publicness of digital goods – i.e. their degree of non-excludability and non-rivalness – and the pirating behaviour of the consumers. The main focus is put on the difference between the ex-ante level of publicness – determined by...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of strategic interactions between two firms affect their optimal pricing and private copy protection levels of digital products. In our model, the firms do not directly interact with each other in terms of prices, but they become...

Copyright law is largely a response to new media: from the printing press through radio, photocopiers, and digital computers, changes in copyright reflect the increased public availability of information reproduction technologies. But while the exclusive rights conferred by copyright are shaped...

On 12 September 2018 the European Parliament approved the new version of the proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market elaborated by the European Commission in 2016. In order to address problems in protecting content and improve the bargaining position of press...

We apply the property rights theory of Grossman-Hart-Moore in the music industry and study the optimal allocation of copyright between the artists who create music and the labels who promote and distribute it. Digital technology opens up a role for new intermediaries. We find that entry of...

This article reviews recent theoretical contributions on digital piracy. It starts by elaborating on the reasons for intellectual property protection, by reporting a few facts about copyright protection, and by examining reasons to become a digital pirate. Next, it provides an exploration of the...