IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa/00696.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Internet piracy and book sales: A field experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Wojciech Hardy
  • Michal Krawczyk
  • Joanna Tyrowicz

Abstract

We report results of an experimental study analyzing the effects of Internet piracy on book sales. We conducted a year-long controlled large-scale field experiment with pre-treatment pair matching. Half of the book titles received experiment treatment, in which a specialized agency would immediately remove any unauthorized copy appearing on the Internet. For the other half we merely registered such occurrences, but no countermeasures were taken. For all the titles we obtained print and e-book sales statistics from the publishers. We find that removal of unauthorized copies was an effective method of curbing piracy, but this had no bearing on legal sales.

Suggested Citation

  • Wojciech Hardy & Michal Krawczyk & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2014. "Internet piracy and book sales: A field experiment," Artefactual Field Experiments 00696, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:artefa:00696
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00696.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arthur Vany & W. Walls, 2007. "Estimating the Effects of Movie Piracy on Box-office Revenue," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 30(4), pages 291-301, June.
    2. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2007. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 1-42.
    3. Brett Danaher & Michael D. Smith & Rahul Telang & Siwen Chen, 2014. "The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 541-553, September.
    4. Adermon, Adrian & Liang, Che-Yuan, 2014. "Piracy and music sales: The effects of an anti-piracy law," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 90-106.
    5. Danaher, Brett & Smith, Michael D., 2014. "Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 1-8.
    6. Zhong Zhao, 2004. "Using Matching to Estimate Treatment Effects: Data Requirements, Matching Metrics, and Monte Carlo Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 91-107, February.
    7. Brett Danaher & Samita Dhanasobhon & Michael D. Smith & Rahul Telang, 2010. "Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1138-1151, 11-12.
    8. Peukert, Christian & Claussen, Jörg & Kretschmer, Tobias, 2013. "Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload. A Tale of the Long Tail?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79697, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The effect of piracy on sales
      by nawmsayn in ZeeConomics on 2014-11-05 20:15:53

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hardy, Wojciech, 2021. "Displacement from piracy in the American comic book market," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Wojciech Hardy, 2020. "Effects of piracy on the American comic book market and the role of digital formats," IBS Working Papers 01/2020, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    3. Tatsuo Tanaka, 2016. "The Effects of Internet Book Piracy: The Case of Japanese Comics," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2016-027, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    4. Kanazawa, Kyogo & Kawaguchi, Kohei, 2022. "Displacement effects of public libraries," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    5. Imke Reimers, 2016. "Can Private Copyright Protection Be Effective? Evidence from Book Publishing," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 411-440.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wojciech Hardy & Michal Krawczyk & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2015. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the link between "online piracy" and sales of cultural goods," Working Papers 2015-23, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    2. C. Bellégo & R. De Nijs, 2015. "The redistributive effect of online piracy on the box office performance of American movies in foreign markets," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2015-17, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    3. Tyrowicz, Joanna & Krawczyk, Michal & Hardy, Wojciech, 2020. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the relationship between “online piracy” and the sales of cultural goods," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    4. Luis Aguiar & Jörg Claussen & Christian Peukert, 2018. "Catch Me If You Can: Effectiveness and Consequences of Online Copyright Enforcement," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 656-678, September.
    5. Brett Danaher & Michael D. Smith & Rahul Telang, 2014. "Piracy and Copyright Enforcement Mechanisms," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 25-61.
    6. Christophe Bellégo & Romain De Nijs, 2020. "The Unintended Consequences of Antipiracy Laws on Markets with Asymmetric Piracy: The Case of the French Movie Industry," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 1064-1086, December.
    7. Emmi Martikainen, 2014. "Does file-sharing reduce DVD sales?," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 9-31, July.
    8. Peukert, Christian & Claussen, Jörg & Kretschmer, Tobias, 2017. "Piracy and box office movie revenues: Evidence from Megaupload," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 188-215.
    9. Michael Arnold & Éric Darmon & Sylvain Dejean & Thierry Pénard, 2014. "Graduated Response Policy and the Behavior of Digital Pirates: Evidence from the French Three-strike (Hadopi) Law," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 201401, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    10. Kanazawa, Kyogo & Kawaguchi, Kohei, 2022. "Displacement effects of public libraries," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    11. McKenzie, Jordi, 2017. "Graduated response policies to digital piracy: Do they increase box office revenues of movies?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 1-11.
    12. McKenzie Jordi & Walls W. David, 2016. "File Sharing and Film Revenues: Estimates of Sales Displacement at the Box Office," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 25-57, January.
    13. Wojciech Hardy, 2022. "Brace yourselves, pirates are coming! the effects of Game of Thrones leak on TV viewership," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 46(1), pages 27-55, March.
    14. Burmester, Alexa B. & Eggers, Felix & Clement, Michel & Prostka, Tim, 2016. "Accepting or fighting unlicensed usage: Can firms reduce unlicensed usage by optimizing their timing and pricing strategies?," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 343-356.
    15. Bradley, Wendy A. & Kolev, Julian, 2023. "How does digital piracy affect innovation? Evidence from software firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(3).
    16. Christian Peukert & Margaritha Windisch, 2023. "The Economics of Copyright in the Digital Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 10687, CESifo.
    17. Imke Reimers, 2016. "Can Private Copyright Protection Be Effective? Evidence from Book Publishing," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 411-440.
    18. Wojciech Hardy, 2018. "Pre-release leaks as one-time incentives for switching to unauthorised sources of cultural content," IBS Working Papers 03/2018, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    19. Tobias Kretschmer & Christian Peukert, 2020. "Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Recorded Music Sales," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 776-800, September.
    20. Danaher, Brett & Smith, Michael D., 2014. "Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 1-8.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:feb:artefa:00696. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Franks (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.