Sylvain Dejean

Graduated Response Policy and the Behavior of Digital Pirates: Evidence from the French Three-Strike (Hadopi) Law

Most developed countries have tried to restrain digital piracy by strengthening laws against copyright infringement. In 2009, France implemented the Hadopi law. Under this law individuals receive a warning the first two times they are detected illegally sharing content through peer to peer (P2P) networks. Legal action is only taken when a third violation is detected. We analyze the impact of this law on individual behavior. Our theoretical model of illegal behavior under a graduated response law predicts that the perceived probability of detection has no impact on the decision to initially engage in digital piracy, but may reduce the intensity of illegal file sharing by those who do pirate. We test the theory using survey data from French Internet users. Our econometric results indicate that the law has no substantial deterrent effect. In addition, we find evidence that individuals who are better informed about the law and piracy alternatives substitute away from monitored P2P networks and illegally access content through unmonitored channels.

Are Streaming and Other Music Consumption Modes Substitutes or Complements

From a representative survey of 2,000 French individuals, we study whether consumption of music through streaming services, such as Spotify or YouTube, is a substitute or a complement to other music consumption modes such as CD, pay-downloads or live music. Controlling for the taste for music, various socio-demographic characteristics, as well as for the usual determinants of music consumption either offline (radio, TV, friends/relatives) or online (online recommendations, social networks), our results show that consuming music as streams (where the consumer does not possess the music but has just an access to it) has no significant effect on CDs purchase but is a complement to buying music online. The use of streaming services also affects positively live music attendance, but only for national or international artists who are more likely to be available on streaming services. These results suggest that a new music ecosystem is emerging in which the “possession” as well as the “access” modes of recorded music consumption might coexist.

Olson's Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Analysis of incentives to contribute in P2P File-Sharing Communities

This article aims to examine how the size of file-sharing communities affects their functioning and performance (i.e. their capacity to share content). Olson (1965) argued that small communities are more able to provide collective goods. Using an original database on BitTorrent file-sharing communities, our article finds a positive relationship between the size of a community and the amount of collective goods provided. But, the individual incentives to contribute slightly decrease with community size. These results seem to indicate that Peer to Peer file-sharing communities provide a pure (non rival) public good. We also show that specialized communities are more efficient than general communities to promote cooperative behavior. Finally, the rules designed by the administrators of these communities play an active role to manage voluntary contributions and improve file-sharing performance.

Do social networks shape the geography of crowdfunding

By relaxing the constraint of proximity to the investor, crowdfunding platforms promise to reshape the geography of small business and entrepreneurship. A necessary condition is that distance is no longer an impediment to the flow of funding between backers and project developers in different geographical areas. Information plays a central role, especially as the decision to invest in a project depends on information that seems to be highly sensitive to distance (trustworthiness and seriousness of the founder, experience of those involved). This specificity makes the existence of social ties between backers and founders a powerful way to convey information across space. The aims of this article are twofold. First, to estimate the role of distance in the geographical flow of crowdfunding and, secondly, to show how the existence of social ties between geographical areas can shape the flow of funding in a local context. Our analysis draws upon a unique database provided by the French leader in rewards-based crowdfunding. With a dataset containing 12 887 projects and 452 850 contributions, representing a value of €19 million over the period 2012–2015, we estimate, for each pair of the 94 French regions, the number and the amount of bilateral funding actions and their determinants in a gravity-like equation model. Social ties between regions are based on regional migration data from the 2013 French national census. The main result is that the elasticity of distance remains important (around 0.5) in the context of rewards-based crowdfunding platforms. We also show that the existence of social ties between regions not only determines the flow of funding – doubling the number of immigrants in a particular region increases the number of investments by 25% – it also strongly reduces and even cancels out (under some specifications) the impact of geographical distance.Does the distance still matters in a context where digital technologies promised to eliminate distance-related costs? In crowdfunding platforms, the founder of a project and the backers mainly exchange tacit information (trustworthiness and seriousness of the founder, feasibility of a project), challenging the ability of the Internet to abolish the cost of distance. We investigate how the existence of social ties between two geographical areas, by lowering the asymmetry of information, can shape the flow of funding in a given country. We take advantage of a unique database provided by the French leader of reward-based Crowdfunding. With a dataset containing 12887 projects and 452 850 contributions representing a value of 19 million euros over the period 2012/2015, we estimate, for each pair of the 94 French regions, the number and the amount of bilateral funding as well as their determinants in a gravity-like equation model. To account for the existence of social ties between French regions we exploit information of the French national Census of 2013 about regional migration. Our mains results are first that the elasticity of distance is still important (around 0.5) in the context of reward-based crowdfunding platforms. We then show that taking into account the existence of social ties between regions strongly reduces and even annihilates (under some specifications) the impact of distance. This result suggests that if digital technology could have reduced the geographical distance, only social proximity seems able to decrease the information-related costs.

Do open online projects create social norms

Abstract While most scholars agree that prosocial motivations have replaced monetary incentives in open online communities, they often argue that these other-regarding motivations are based on exogenous preferences, and are the prerogative of the contributors. With the help of the French Wikimédia Foundation, we have been able to challenge this claim by questioning a large sample (n=13000) of Wikipedia users. After having expressed their feelings about Wikipédia, these users were invited to play a Dictator Game. As a result we show that a large proportion of respondents, in particular the simple users, chose the equal split in the DG (66% of the sample). This suggests that a majority of participants, mainly the users of, rather than the contributors to Wikipedia, adhere to a social norm of sharing. Investigating the determinants of this result, we prove that an involvement measured by usages (intensity and variety), as well as attachment to, and time spent on Wikipedia, are correlated with the choice of the 50/50 split in the DG. The method of instrumental variables gives an indication that adherence to the social norm of sharing is endogenously determined by the involvement in an open online community. Our result highlights the importance of interactions with the institutional and technical framework of the community in the construction of an adherence to the norm, in particular for those who seem to play a very passive role in the collective building of the Wikipedia project, the users.This paper shows the existence of a strong social norm in a massive online public good community, demonstrated by the choice of the equal split in the Dictator Game (DG). With the help of the French Wikimedia Foundation, we questioned a large sample of Wikipedia users and contributors on their practices, and then asked them to play the DG. The results are statistically significant and show how people respect (or not) social norms. They also show that both contributors and non-contributors adhere to a norm that it is correlated with their “patronage” of Wikipedia. Regular, long-term users, who declare a strong attachment to the platform, are more likely to choose the 50/50 split in the DG. The method of instrumental variables was used to identify a causal relationship between the equal split and involvement in Wikipedia. This did not invalidate the hypothesis that choosing an equal split in the DG is driven by the level of involvement in Wikipedia.

La réponse graduée de l’Hadopi a-t-elle eu des effets sur le piratage de musique et de films ?. Une étude empirique des pratiques de consommation en ligne

This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Hadopi (a French antipiracy agency) in reducing piracy of music and movies, and in promoting legal consumption.?We conjecture that Hadopi may have three potential effects, namely informational or educational effects (i.e. better awareness of Internet users about illicit practices) ; deterrent effects (i.e. increased monitoring of illegal distribution channels) ; and incentive effects (i.e. promotion of legal channels).?Using survey data from a representative sample of French Internet users, we find that Hadopi had differentiated impacts on music and films and series consumption patterns.?Our results show evidence of deterrent and information effects in the case of music while information and incentive effects tend to be more prevalent in the case of films and series. Classification JEL : K42, L82, O34.