Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management Protection
by Volker Weber
Via Ars Technica, an interesting paper:
In certain instances, we find that eliminating DRM restrictions can lead to an increase in sales of legal downloads, a decrease in sales of traditional CDs, and a decrease in piracy. This is in stark contrast to the view that removing DRM will unconditionally increase the level of piracy. ... Our analysis also generates several additional counterintuitive results. By removing DRM and making illegal copying easier, the record label can benefit from the intensified competition between pirated music and the download retailer. Furthermore, this suggests that DRM may protect the "traditional businesses," that is, retailers of CDs, more than they protect the download retailer. Finally, we also find that under certain conditions, piracy and label profits can both increase. It is important to note that this positive relationship between piracy and label profits occurs without any network effects in the model. That is, piracy does not contribute directly to consumer utility; instead, it has a positive effect based solely on how it affects prices of the legal products in the market.
Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.
Comments
Recent comments
Alexander Kluge on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 16:50
Ed Brill on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 06:42
Volker Weber on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 01:07
Paul Mooney on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 00:40
Volker Weber on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 00:36
Paul Mooney on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 00:35
Volker Weber on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 22:16
Brett Hershberger on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 21:50
Eric Mack on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 20:34
Karl Heindel on Emotion in a RIM ad? Hell is freezing over. at 20:25
Ed Brill on Does IBM Lotus Notes Traveler support the BlackBerry PlayBook? at 19:34
Volker Weber on PlayBook Connected at 19:03
Gregg Eldred on PlayBook Connected at 18:59
Gregg Eldred on The Roche Group goes Google at 17:22
Oliver Barner on PlayBook Connected at 16:46
Volker Weber on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 16:19
Horst Weber on PlayBook Connected at 15:55
Alexander Kluge on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 15:26
Volker Weber on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 15:16
Alexander Kluge on Finally a directional microphone for my iPhone at 15:14
Francie Tanner on The race is on at 17:49
Juergen Heinrich on The race is on at 06:38
Alex Martin on tizi go at 17:10
Chew Pei Xin on How to unsubscribe from My Nokia SMS spam at 16:49
Stefan Tilkov on The Roche Group goes Google at 13:39
Click here to subscribe
Post a comment