Music Product as a Durable Good and Online Piracy

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2006

Abstract

Music is typical experience good and the formats in which music is available; for example, CDs and cassettes or downloaded files are durable in nature. Using these two typical characteristics of the ‘music product’, in this paper, we develop an analytical framework to study the economic implications of online music piracy. On one hand, we show that no protection against piracy is never optimal for the legitimate music producer; on the other hand, we show that complete protection against piracy may not always be the best option; the decision on the degree of limiting piracy depends on the extent of the informational value of music downloads, cost of piracy and the quality of the downloaded music and as a result a partial protection can be optimal to the music producer.

Comments

This article was originally published in Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, volume 3, issue 2, in 2006.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

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