The legal and technological battle in the music industry: Information-push versus information-pull technologies [An article from: International Review of Law & Economics]

This digital document is a journal article from International Review of Law & Economics, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies are often seen as a threat by copyright owners because they encourage piracy by making digital copies easier to obtain. In response, major record companies have come up with new devices designed to protect original material, and lobbied to reinforce legal protection. We view traditional distribution as an information-push technology in which the firm pays to provide information to consumers and P2P as an information-pull technology where consumers spend resources to acquire information on products they have a potential interest in by searching, downloading and testing digital copies of original products before they make their purchase decision. We determine copyright owners' protection strategies according to the level of legal protection, and we study their effects on profits and consumers' surplus with the two different information transmission technologies.