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When breaking the law gets you the job: evidence from the electronic dance music community

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  • Li, Xu
  • Ody-Brasier, Amandine

Abstract

Why would a law-abiding occupational community support members engaged in legally prohibited actions? We propose that lawbreaking can elicit informal support when it is construed as a disinterested action—intended to serve the community rather than the perpetrator. We study how illegal remixing (“bootlegging”) affects an artist’s ability to secure opening act and other performance opportunities in the electronic dance music (EDM) community, whose members endorse the substance of copyright law but whose norms about bootlegging are ambiguous. Data on 38,784 disc jockeys (DJs) across 97 countries over 10 years reveal that producing bootlegs is associated with more opportunities to perform, compared to producing official remixes or original music. This effect disappears when community members view bootlegging as a self-serving action—primarily designed to benefit the perpetrator. An online experiment and an expert survey rule out the possibility that bootlegs are considered more creative, of higher quality, or better able to attract attention. We shed additional light on our proposed mechanism by analyzing data from 34 interviews with EDM professionals. This helps us to explain how a lawbreaker can paradoxically be perceived as serving the community, thereby eliciting active community support for their action.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Xu & Ody-Brasier, Amandine, 2025. "When breaking the law gets you the job: evidence from the electronic dance music community," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 127427, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:127427
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/127427/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    occupational communities; intellectual property (IP) laws; creative industries; norms and deviance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

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