A Behavioral Model of Digital Music Piracy

The increasing pervasiveness of the internet, broadband connections and the emergence of digital compression technologies have dramatically changed the face of digital music piracy. Digitally compressed music files are essentially a perfect public economic good, and illegal copying of these files has increasingly become rampant. This paper presents a study on the behavioral dynamics which impact the piracy of digital audio files, and provides a contrast with software piracy. Our results indicate that the general ethical model of software piracy is also broadly applicable to audio piracy. However, significant enough differences with software underscore the unique dynamics of audio piracy. Practical implications that can help the recording industry to effectively combat piracy, and future research directions are highlighted.