Internet piracy and book sales: a field experiment

Wojciech Hardy, Michal Krawczyk and Joanna Tyrowicz

No 2014-23, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: We report the 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 experimental 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.

Keywords: digital piracy; e-books; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D12 K42 L82 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cul, nep-exp, nep-ict, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-iue and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/inf/wyd/WP/WNE_WP140.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Internet “piracy” and book sales: a field experiment (2024)
Working Paper: Internet piracy and book sales: a field experiment (2023)
Working Paper: Internet piracy and book sales: A field experiment (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2014-23

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