Can filesharers be triggered by economic incentives? Results of an experiment

Illegal filesharing on the internet leads to considerable financial losses for artists and copyright owners as well as producers and sellers of music. Thus far, measures to contain this phenomenon have been rather restrictive. However, there are still a considerable number of illegal systems, and users are able to decide quite freely between legal and illegal downloads because the latter are still difficult to sanction. Recent economic approaches account for the improved bargaining position of users. They are based on the idea of revenue-splitting between professional sellers and peers. In order to test such an innovative business model, the study reported in this article carried out an experiment with 100 undergraduate students, forming five small peer-to-peer networks.The networks were confronted with different economic conditions.The results indicate that even experienced filesharers hold favourable attitudes towards revenue-splitting.They seem to be willing to adjust their behaviour to different economic conditions

The Promise of Internet Intermediary Liability

The Internet has transformed the economics of communication, creating a spirited debate about the proper role of federal, state, and international governments in regulating conduct related to the Internet. Many argue that Internet communications should be entirely self-regulated because such communications cannot or should not be the subject of government regulation. The advocates of that approach would prefer a no-regulation zone around Internet communications, based largely on the unexamined view that Internet activity is fundamentally different in a way that justifies broad regulatory exemption. At the same time, some kinds of activity that the Internet facilitates undisputedly violate widely shared norms and legal rules. State legislatures motivated by that concern have begun to respond with Internet-specific laws directed at particular contexts, giving little or no credence to the claims that the Internet needs special treatment. This Article starts from the realist assumption that government regulation of the Internet is inevitable. Thus, instead of focusing on the naive question of whether the Internet should be regulated, this Article discusses how to regulate Internet-related activity in a way that is consistent with approaches to analogous offline conduct. The Article also assumes that the Internet\u27s most salient characteristic is that it inserts intermediaries into relationships that could be, and previously would have been, conducted directly in an offline environment. Existing liability schemes generally join traditional fault-based liability rules with broad Internet-specific liability exemptions. Those exemptions are supported by the premise that in many cases the conduct of the intermediaries is so wholly passive as to make liability inappropriate. Over time, this has produced a great volume of litigation, mostly in the context of the piracy of copyrighted works, in which the responsibility of the intermediary generally turns on fault, as measured by the intermediary\u27s level of involvement in the challenged conduct. This Article argues that the pervasive role of intermediaries calls not for a broad scheme of exoneration, premised on passivity, but rather for a more thoughtful development of principles for determining when and how it makes economic sense to allocate responsibility for wrongful conduct to the least cost avoider. The Internet\u27s rise has brought about three changes that make intermediaries more likely to be least cost avoiders in the Internet context than they previously have been in offline contexts: (1) an increase in the likelihood that it will be easy to identify specific intermediaries for large classes of transactions, (2) a reduction in information costs, which makes it easier for the intermediaries to monitor the conduct of end users, and (3) increased anonymity, which makes remedies against end users generally less effective. Accordingly, in cases where intermediaries can feasibly control the conduct, this Article recommends serious attention to the possibility of one of three different schemes of intermediary liability: traditional liability for damages, takedown schemes in which the intermediary must remove offensive content upon proper notice, and \u27hot list schemes in which the intermediary must avoid facilitation of transactions with certain parties. Part III of this Article uses that framework to analyze the propriety of intermediary liability for several kinds of Internet-related misconduct. This Article is agnostic about the propriety of any particular regulatory scheme, recognizing the technological and contextual contingency of any specific proposal. Because any such scheme will impose costs on innocent end users, selecting a particular level of regulation should depend on policymakers\u27 view of the net social benefits of eradicating the misconduct, taking into account the intermediaries\u27 and innocent users\u27 compliance costs associated with the regulation. Still, the analysis of this Article suggests three points. First, the practicality of peer-to-peer distribution networks for the activity in question is an important consideration because those networks undermine the regulatory scheme\u27s effectiveness, thereby making regulation less useful. Second, the highly concentrated market structure of Internet payment intermediaries makes reliance on payment intermediaries particularly effective as a regulatory strategy because of the difficulty illicit actors have in relocating to new payment vehicles. Third, with respect to security harms, such as viruses, spam, phishing, and hacking, this Article concludes that the addition of intermediary liability in those cases is less likely to be beneficial because market incentives appear to be causing intermediaries to undertake substantial efforts to solve these problems without the threat of liability

My Library: Copyright and the Role of Institutions in a Peer-to-Peer World

Today\u27s technology turns every computer - every hard drive - into a type of library. But the institutions traditionally known as libraries have been given special consideration under copyright law, even as commercial endeavors and filesharing programs have begun to emulate some of their functions. This Article explores how recent technological and legal trends are affecting public and school-affiliated libraries, which have special concerns that are not necessarily captured by an end-consumer-oriented analysis. Despite the promise that technology will empower individuals, we must recognize the crucial structural role of intermediaries that select and distribute copyrighted works. By exploring how traditional libraries are being affected by developments such as filesharing services, the iTunes Music Store, and Google\u27s massive digitization project, this Article examines the implications of legal and technological changes that are mainly not directed at libraries, but are nonetheless vital to their continued existence

Efficiency and Nash Equilibria in a Scrip System for P2P Networks

A model of providing service in a P2P network is analyzed. It is shown that by adding a scrip system, a mechanism that admits a reasonable Nash equilibrium that reduces free riding can be obtained. The effect of varying the total amount of money (scrip) in the system on efficiency (i.e., social welfare) is analyzed, and it is shown that by maintaining the appropriate ratio between the total amount of money and the number of agents, efficiency is maximized. The work has implications for many online systems, not only P2P networks but also a wide variety of online forums for which scrip systems are popular, but formal analyses have been lacking

Of Price Discriminiation, Rootkits and Flatrates

For digital information goods, economic logic seems to demand price discrimination which in turn seems to demand an implementation in the form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). The article critiques this attitude, using the recent Sony BMG rootkit case as an example. It tries to break through the mental lock-in by pointing to alternative soluions, specifically the Global License that was recently passed by French Parliament.Not Reviewe