Impact of Online Renting on Software Piracy: Profit, Policy and Welfare Implications
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چکیده
Online renting of software products is emerging as a new way of dissemination for several major software firms. Compared to outright selling, the online renting scheme delivers a software product as a service instead of a physical good. Hence, users are not easily able to illegally duplicate or distribute it. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the online renting mechanism on software piracy with a two-period model, where a piracy market is present in the second period. Our analysis showed that under certain conditions, online renting could increase an independent software vendor’s (ISV) profit. The higher the substitutability of the illegitimate copies, the greater the incentive to provide a rental product an ISV has. However, our analytical results showed that the online renting scheme would reduce social welfare. Implications for profit, policy and social welfare were discussed.
منابع مشابه
Impact Of Online Renting On Software Piracy
Online rental of software is emerging as a new way of dissemination for several major software firms. Compared to outright selling, the renting scheme delivers the software as a service instead of a physical good. Hence, users cannot privately make copies for resale in the market. We investigate the impact of the renting mechanism on software piracy and pricing in a two-period model whereby a p...
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تاریخ انتشار 2002