Fighting Information Good Piracy with Versioning

Information goods piracy is a pervasive problem as advanced information and communication technologies become so inexpensive and so easy to access. This problem, if not alleviated, can pose a serious loss to society as it can reduce information goods providers’ incentives to develop information goods or threaten the use and growth of the Internet as a distribution media for valued digital information goods. Contrasting with previous literature, which mainly consider instruments, such as law enforcement or technology-based solutions, that work on increasing individual piracy cost, we consider using versioning as a complementary means to these other methods. While the previous literature has shown that versioning may not be the optimal strategy for information goods (having negligible or concave marginal costs), we show that versioning could be a very effective and profitable instrument to fight piracy. Furthermore, we also show that it is possible to do this without sacrificing the consumer’s surplus and, as a result, the entire social welfare could increase. This suggests that by using versioning along with other instruments that work on increasing individual piracy cost, information goods providers can fight piracy more efficiently

Digital piracy : theory

This article reviews recent theoretical contributions on digital piracy. It starts by elaborating on the reasons for intellectual property protection, by reporting a few facts about copyright protection, and by examining reasons to become a digital pirate. Next, it provides an exploration of the consequences of digital piracy, using a base model and several extensions (with consumer sampling, network effects, and indirect appropriation). A closer look at market-structure implications of end-user piracy is then taken. After a brief review of commercial piracy, additional legal and private responses to end-user piracy are considered. Finally, a quick look at emerging new business models is taken.information good, piracy, copyright, IP protection, internet, peer-to-peer, software, music

Digital Piracy: Theory

This article reviews recent theoretical contributions on digital piracy. It starts by elaborating on the reasons for intellectual property protection, by reporting a few facts about copyright protection, and by examining reasons to become a digital pirate. Next, it provides an exploration of the consequences of digital piracy, using a base model and several extensions (with consumer sampling, network effects, and indirect appropriation). A closer look at market-structure implications of end-user piracy is then taken. After a brief review of commercial piracy, additional legal and private responses to end-user piracy are considered. Finally, a quick look at emerging new business models is taken.information good, piracy, copyright, IP protection, internet, peer-to-peer, software, music

Product Portfolio and Mobile Apps Success: Evidence from App Store Market

This research empirically analyzes seller’s product portfolio strategy in the mobile application (apps) market. We use crosssectionaldata on the most downloaded application rankings in the Apple App Store to examine the impact of app portfoliostrategy on sales performance. We find that app portfolio diversification is positively correlated with sales performance. Wealso find that sellers who offer a combination of free and paid apps have higher sales performance than those who deliverpaid apps only. Furthermore, the results show that sellers with scale advantages compete differently from sellers in the longtail. These findings have implications for theorizing about product portfolio management in the emerging mobile app storemarkets

Study on the performance of palm methyl ester in a combustion system

Nowadays, the world is adversely affected by the rapid growth of various industries which use fossil diesel fuel as a main source to power their respective industries. As such, this phenomenon has contributed to environmental pollution apart from these natural resources are increasingly reduced thus resulting in price increments. However, biodiesel fuel has recognized by many researcher as a potential replacement of fossil fuel. A study was conducted to investigate the performance of alternative energy sources that are environmentally friendly and renewable such as palm biodiesel. Therefore, this project presents an investigation on the combustion performance of Palm Methyl Ester (PME) which also known as Palm Biodiesel in an oil burner system. Several Carotino’s palm biodiesel blends (B10, B20, and B40) also have been made by blended with Conventional Diesel Fuel (CDF). Examination of the fuel properties for each blends including CDF and PME have been carried out. The performance of the fuels have been studied based on its wall temperature profile and gas emissions generated such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO). The test fuels have been burned in the oil burner combustion chamber at different equivalent ratios and using three different oil burner nozzles (1.25, 1.50 and 1.75 USgal/h). From the test, PME is the lowest emission production compared to CDF but generate a low temperature. For example, at stoichiometric mixture with nozzle 1.25 USgal/h, NOx and CO generated by PME decreased of 27% and 30% respectively compared to CDF. PME has recorded about 12% drop in an average temperature compared to the CDF at the same condition. The higher fuel flow rate used, results more heat and emission generated. The results indicated may be benefits to using biodiesel in industrial processes due to less pollution production

Back to software "profitable piracy": the role of information diffusion

Can software piracy be profitable for a software editor? We tackle this issue in a simple model where software is an experience good and where the potential users can choose to adopt or pirate software or to delay their adoption. In that context, we show that a moderate piracy can be profitable for a software editor to foster users' adoption.

Back to software "profitable piracy": the role of information diffusion

Can software piracy be profitable for a software editor? We tackle this issue in a simple model where software is an experience good and where the potential users can choose to adopt or pirate software or to delay their adoption. In that context, we show that a moderate piracy can be profitable for a software editor to foster users' adoption.

Software dynamic pricing by an optimization deterministic model with presence of piracy

This project presents an optimization model for pricing a monopolistic software application with presence of piracy. The purpose is raising revenue produced by product’s sale with adjusting prices in a price skimming strategy and minimizing amount of piracy. The model is a multifunctional price skimming optimization with simplex method which accompanied by deterministic and stochastic methods for calculating time intervals of each segment. Linear functions are used to describing demand of each segment. In addition a linear piracy function is proposed to making piracy a dynamic parameter. The model has the ability to apply penetration pricing and controlling market share. Windows 7 is chosen for case study. Optimizing case of Windows 7 is resulted in 8.2 percentage increase in revenue, while value of net market share is virtually constant. Therefore the developed model demonstrates its competence in optimizing revenue by modifying prices with presence of piracy. Results show that to face with piracy, range of price skimming must decreased in a way that highest price need to be intensely decreased and also lowest one must be slightly decreased. By using this strategy lowest loss in revenue due to piracy can be recurred. Effects of an escalation in piracy on proposed optimization model are: increase in number of sale, demand, selling portion, market share but decrease in price, price difference between segments, and revenue. Time intervals between successive prices, which are obtained for Windows 7, is obtained by deterministic and stochastic technics which are shown to be nearly equal due to large number of customers

Evaluating Pricing Strategy Using e-Commerce Data: Evidence and Estimation Challenges

As Internet-based commerce becomes increasingly widespread, large data sets about the demand for and pricing of a wide variety of products become available. These present exciting new opportunities for empirical economic and business research, but also raise new statistical issues and challenges. In this article, we summarize research that aims to assess the optimality of price discrimination in the software industry using a large e-commerce panel data set gathered from Amazon.com. We describe the key parameters that relate to demand and cost that must be reliably estimated to accomplish this research successfully, and we outline our approach to estimating these parameters. This includes a method for ``reverse engineering'' actual demand levels from the sales ranks reported by Amazon, and approaches to estimating demand elasticity, variable costs and the optimality of pricing choices directly from publicly available e-commerce data. Our analysis raises many new challenges to the reliable statistical analysis of e-commerce data and we conclude with a brief summary of some salient ones.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000187 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

White Knight or Trojan Horse? The Consequences of Digital Rights Management for Consumers, Firms and Society

Due to its ability to solve all main problems associated with digital goods, Digital Rights Management is the favourite option used by companies to tackle piracy. The aim of this article is to discuss the consequences of DRM for consumers, firms and society. The rationales of DRM are discussed and the expected benefits for firms are presented.. In contrast, consumers are shown to be likely to see few benefits in DRM. This article demonstrates that even a standard DRM system is unlikely to improve social welfare. The article concludes with some public policy recommendations.Digital Rights Management, Digital Goods, Piracy, Excludability, Durability, Sampling.