The information and communications technologies (ICT) are characterized by an exponential development which is unique in industry and has unprecedented consequencies in the entire society. The papers analysis is focused on the features of this exponential development, which is for decades ruled...

For information/digital products, the used goods market has been viewed as a threat by producers. However, it is not clear if this view is justified because the used goods market also provides owners with an opportunity to sell their products. To investigate the impact of the used goods market...

We use data from a large-scale survey of non-adopting households to provide estimates of their willingness to pay for broadband. A large fraction – approximately 2/3 – of the reporting households indicated that they would not consider subscribing to broadband at any price. For the remaining...

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....

Die Inhaber der Rechte an Musikstücken drängen auf einen wirksamen Schutz vor der unberechtigten Nutzung der von ihnen verlegten Titel. Anbieter von Musik-Download-Diensten haben daher Programme entwickelt (Digital Rights Management Systems, DRMS), die unter anderem das Kopieren verhindern...

Patents are one of the most valuable sources of technical and commercial knowledge. Although patents are public and can be easily searched on the Web, for most countries, there is no easy way to download bulk patent data. The purpose of this paper is to create a web mining framework used to...

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,...

There is considerable debate regarding the use of intellectual property rights (IPR) to spur innovation in the software industry. In this paper we focus on the choice of intellectual property right regimes and industry growth. We begin by developing a growth optimal mixture of open source and...

So-called open source software (OSS) is marked by free access to the software and its source code. Copyright-based OSS licenses permit users to use, change, improve and redistribute the software, which is designed and developed in a public, collaborative manner. High quality OSS products like...

The paper analyzes the impact of institutional and cultural factors on a remarkable economic activity: the production of so-called open source software (OSS). OSS is marked by free access to the software and its source code. Copyright-based OSS licenses permit users to use, change, improve and...