Digital locks push music consumers to pirate: Study

Digital rights management on music files is pushing “some consumers choose to pirate,” a new research report from Rice and Duke universities says. Marketing professors Dinah Vernik of Rice University, and Devavrat Purohit and Preyas Desai of Duke University, conducted an analysis of how digital rights management, or the digital locks on content, affects consumers and music piracy. Their researcher paper, titled "Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management Protection," will be published in the November-December issue of Marketing Science. The paper says that “while these restrictions make piracy more costly and difficult, the restrictions also have a negative impact on legal users who have no intention of doing anything illegal,” according to an announcement this month on the Rice University website. The paper notes that only users who pay for music “pay the price and suffer from the restrictions” while “llegal users are not affected because the pirated product does not have DRM restrictions." The study examines consumers' choices among the major sources of music, analysing competition between traditional music retailers, digital retailers and pirated sources. "Decreased piracy doesn't guarantee increased profits," Purohit said in the announcement. "In fact, our analysis demonstrates that under some conditions, one can observe lower levels of piracy and lower profits."

Digital locks push music consumers to pirate: Study

Brief | October 11, 2011

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