Thomas Le Texier

Private or Public Law Enforcement? The Case of Digital Anti-Piracy Policies with Illegal Non-Monitored Behaviors

Should rights be publicly or privately enforced in the case of digital piracy? The emergence of large-scale anti-piracy laws and the existence of illegal non-monitored channels raise important issues for the design of anti-piracy policies. We study the impact of these demand-side policies in two enforcement settings (namely, public and private enforcement settings) with an outside adoption option for users of an illegal non-monitored channel. Our results show that public enforcement generates higher monitoring and lower price levels, and also higher legal welfare than private enforcement. However, we identify potential conflicts of interest between the legal seller and the social planner when the efficiency of the illegal non-monitored channel is low. Introducing supply-side policies, i.e. policies targeted to suppliers of illegal content, we find that they may have unexpected impacts and can damage legal welfare. We also identify situations in which the two policies are substitutes or complements.

Private or Public Law Enforcement? The Case of Digital Piracy Policies with Non-Monitored Illegal Behaviors

In the case of digital piracy should rights be publicly or privately enforced? The emergence of large-scale anti-piracy laws and the existence of non-monitored illegal channels raise important issues for the design of digital anti-piracy policies. In this paper, we study the impact of these two enforcement settings (public vs. private) in the presence of an illegal non-monitored outside option for users. Taking account of market outcomes, we show that in both cases, the optimal strategies of the legal seller and the monitoring authority leads to rejection of the outside option out while accommodating to the presence of illegal monitored channels. Compared to private enforcement, public enforcement generates higher monitoring levels and lower price levels. Public enforcement also generates greater (legal) welfare. However, we identify potential conflict of interests between the legal seller and the social planner when the efficiency of non monitored networks is low. We provide some insights into the role of supply side anti-piracy policies.

Piracy, indirect « Sampling » and sequential adoption of TV series with multiple episodes

Nous analysons le poids d’une activite illegale de telechargement ou de streaming sur l’activite commerciale de «xa0video a la demandexa0», ainsi que le role de l’echantillonnage indirect dans l’etablissement des strategies tarifaires. A ce titre, nous considerons le cas des series televisees a episodes multiples, dont l’adoption est definie de maniere sequentielle. Nos resultats montrent que l’acteur marchand eprouve toujours un interet a integrer l’echantillonnage indirect dans son modele de tarification optimale. Neanmoins, cette strategie peut parfois ne pas lui suffire pour tirer systematiquement parti de l’activite illegale, dans la mesure ou son niveau de profit depend directement de la combinaison de deux effets opposes (un effet «xa0direct de piratagexa0» et un effet «xa0differentiel d’echantillonnagexa0»). Les resultats de notre analyse du bien-etre ne justifient pas quant a eux la mise en oeuvre de politiques publiques visant a evincer les acteurs hors-la-loi sur le seul argument de la preservation de l’interet social.