How does music as a digital service affect consumerattitude and behaviour?

Digital technologies allow users to share files, which in some circumstances violates property rights and constitutes consumer misbehaviour. This form of behaviour, often called piracy, is cited as causing revenue loss to the creative industries. Existing empirical evidence is silent on consumer’s individual beliefs and their attitudes towards copyright infringement. A new concept dubbed the ‘Robin Hood’ tendency is developed as a quantitative measure of consumer belief that illegally copying and distributing digital resource is a legitimate form of behaviour. Analytical applications are developed which exploit a unique dataset comprising 18,000 data points for music consumers from ten countries. Results show that digital markets suffer from consumers who demonstrate the Robin Hood tendency and identifies that countries with strong institutions have fewer consumers with this attitude. Furthermore, evidence suggests that copyright law enforcement should be coupled with efforts to educate consumers as to the effect their misbehaviour has content creators

Music business models and piracy

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the scale of illegal file-sharing activity across ten countries and to correlate this activity with country revenues. The work aims to elucidate an under-explored business model challenge which exists in parallel with a music piracy challenge. The study data are drawn from a number of sources, including a data set of a survey of more than 44,000 consumers in ten different countries undertaken in 2010. Following analysis, all findings are validated by a panel of industry experts. Results show that non-legitimate file-sharing activity is a heterogeneous issue across countries. The scale of activity varies from 14 per cent in Germany to 44 per cent in Spain, with an average of 28 per cent. File-sharing activity negatively correlates to music industry revenue per capita. This research finds many consumers are not engaging with online business models. Almost one fourth of the population claim that they do not consume digital music in either legal or illegal forms. This phenomenon is also negatively correlated with sales per capita. Results support the need for policy makers to introduce strong intellectual property rights (IPR) regulation which reduces file-sharing activity. The work also identifies a large percentage of non-participants in the digital market who may be re-engaged with music through business model innovation. This research presents a map of the current file-sharing activity in ten countries using a rich and unique dataset. The work identifies that a country's legal origin correlates to data on file-sharing activity, with countries from a German legal origin illegally file sharing least. Approximately, half of the survey respondents chose not to answer the question related to file-sharing activity. Different estimates of the true scale of file-sharing activity are given based upon three different assumptions of the file sharing activity of non-respondents to this question. The challenge of engaging consumers in the digital market through different business models is discussed in light of digital music's high velocity environment. © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved

Digital dark matter within product service systems

© 2017, © Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The unobserved benefits of digital technologies are described as digital dark matter. Product service systems (PSSs) are bundles of products and services that deliver value in use, which is unobserved but generates benefits. This paper aims to empirically quantify digital dark matter within PSSs and correlates that measure with national competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach: A novel methodology establishes the link between customer needs and a product and digital service portfolio offered across ten developed economies. The case context is the music industry where product and services are often substitutes – a cannibalistic PSS. Consumer information is obtained from a unique database of more than 18,000 consumer surveys. Consumer demand for digital formats is modelled and predicted through logistic regressions. Findings: The work provides inverse estimations for digital dark matter within PSSs by calculating the gap between supply and demand for digital offers – described as the business model challenge. The USA has the lowest business model challenge; the home of major companies developing digital technologies. Digital dark matter is shown to be positively correlated with national competitiveness and manufacturing competitiveness indices. Practical implications: The success of a cannibalistic PSS requires good understanding of market demand. Governments embarking on soft innovation policies might incentivise the development of service-orientated business models based on digital technologies. Originality/value: Work expands theory on the concept of digital dark matter to the PSS literature. Empirically, a novel method is proposed to measure digital dark matter

Why Do We Need Post-Dilation After Implantation of a Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold Even for a Soft Lesion?

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Evolution of Highly Eccentric Binary Neutron Stars Including Tidal Effects

This work is the first in a series of studies aimed at understanding the dynamics of highly eccentric binary neutron stars, and constructing an appropriate gravitational-waveform model for detection. Such binaries are possible sources for ground-based gravitational wave detectors, and are expected to form through dynamical scattering and multi-body interactions in globular clusters and galactic nuclei. In contrast to black holes, oscillations of neutron stars are generically excited by tidal effects after close pericenter passage. Depending on the equation of state, this can enhance the loss of orbital energy by up to tens of percent over that radiated away by gravitational waves during an orbit. Under the same interaction mechanism, part of the orbital angular momentum is also transferred to the star. We calculate the impact of the neutron star oscillations on the orbital evolution of such systems, and compare these results to full numerical simulations. Utilizing a Post-Newtonian flux description we propose a preliminary model to predict the timing of different pericenter passages. A refined version of this model (taking into account Post-Newtonian corrections to the tidal coupling and the oscillations of the stars) may serve as a waveform model for such highly eccentric systems.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Barium isotope (re-)equilibration in the barite-fluid system and its implications for marine barite archives

Variations in the Ba isotopic composition of seawater are largely driven by the extent of barite precipitation in the marine photic zone and replenishment of Ba by upwelling and/or continental inputs. Pelagic barites offer a robust tool for tracing sources and sinks of Ba in the (paleo)ocean as they record these isotopic variations. Knowledge of the Ba isotope fractionation between barite and ambient waters is therefore imperative. Here, the Ba isotope fractionation between barite and Ba2+ (aq) under equilibrium conditions has been estimated by the three-isotope method with a 135Ba-enriched reactive fluid. The estimated Ba isotope fractionation was Δ137/134BaBarite-Ba2+ = −0.07 ± 0.08‰. Textural observations of barite crystals recovered up to 756 days of reaction reveal smoothing of solid surfaces but also typical dissolution features such as development of pits and cracks. Thus, dissolution/re-precipitation is likely the mechanism controlling the observed isotope exchange that is facilitated by the further development of porosity in the crystals. Additionally, the isotope exchange in the experimental runs fits a second-order law yielding a surface normalized isotope exchange rate of ∼2.8 × 10−10 mol/m2/s. This exchange rate could theoretically result in complete isotope exchange between pelagic barite with a typical edge size of 1 μm and ambient seawater or pore fluid within years, altering the barite's Ba isotopic composition during settling towards the seafloor and/or after deposition in marine sediments. Although there is considerable uncertainty in extrapolating experimental results to natural conditions and longer time scales, the rapid rates of exchange observed experimentally over short timescales suggest that isotope exchange in pelagic barite should be considered during interpretation of the Ba isotope composition as a paleoarchive.</p

High-order harmonic generation in Xe, Kr, and Ar driven by a 2.1-\mu m source: high-order harmonic spectroscopy under macroscopic effects

We experimentally and numerically study the atomic response and pulse propagation effects of high-order harmonics generated in Xe, Kr, and Ar driven by a 2.1-\mu m infrared femtosecond light source. The light source is an optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier, and a modified strong-field approximation and 3-dimensional pulse propagation code are used for the numerical simulations. The extended cutoff in the long-wavelength driven high-harmonic generation has revealed the spectral shaping of high-order harmonics due to the atomic structure (or photo-recombination cross-section) and the macroscopic effects, which are the main factors of determining the conversion efficiency besides the driving wavelength. Using precise numerical simulations to determine the macroscopic electron wavepacket, we are able to extract the photo-recombination cross-sections from experimental high-order harmonic spectra in the presence of macroscopic effects. We have experimentally observed that the macroscopic effects shift the observed Cooper minimum of Kr from 80 eV to 60-70 eV and wash out the Cooper minimum of Ar. Measured high-harmonic conversion efficiencies per harmonic near the cutoff are ~10^{-9} for all three gases.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure