Catch Me if You Can: Effectiveness and Consequences of Online Copyright Enforcement

Konferenzbeitrag

Taking down copyright-infringing websites is a way to reduce consumption of pirated media content and increase licensed consumption. We analyze the consequences of the shutdown of the most popular German video streaming website - kino.to - in June 2011. Using individual-level clickstream data, we find that the shutdown led to significant but short-lived declines in piracy levels. The existence of alternative sources of unlicensed consumption, coupled with the rapid emergence of new platforms, led the streaming piracy market to quickly recover from the intervention and to limited substitution into licensed consumption. Our results therefore present evidence of a high elasticity of supply in the online movie piracy market, together with relatively low switching costs for users of copyright infringing platforms. The fact that the post-shutdown market structure was much more fragmented - and therefore more resistant to future interventions - further questions the effectiveness of the intervention.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2016: Demographischer Wandel - Session: Empirical Market Studies ; No. B02-V1

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Entertainment; Media ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Peukert, Christian ; Aguiar, Luis ; Claussen, Jörg
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
• (where): Kiel und Hamburg
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/145490
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET