Digitization and the dissemination of broadband Internet brought along a phenomenon commonly known as digital piracy whereby copyrighted content is illegally distributed and accessed on the web. Perceived as a serious threat to business by several large industries (e.g. music, movie, software, and publishing), it did not take long before industry players started to take legal action against providers of infringing content and to exert pressure upon legislators to act towards limiting digital piracy activities.

Most empirical research on the impact of digital piracy has given support to the industry’s concerns by showing that piracy hurts firms’ profits (e.g. [rob_2006, zentner_2006, waldfogel_2010, liebowitz_2008, bounie_2006, rob_2007, danaher_2010].

In this task, we investigate the effectiveness of a number of piracy control strategies targeting both suppliers of pirated content and its users. This work will contribute to the literature stream studying the role of supply and demand side anti-piracy measures in mitigating the negative effects of digital piracy and promoting the use of legal alternatives. This task oversees a set of sub tasks that together inform researchers, industry players, and policy makers on the possible avenues for managing digital piracy. We plan to answer the following research questions:

1. Can the availability of legal media channels effectively reduce digital piracy?
   1. This task measures the effectiveness of a private demand side intervention – the distribution of free legal content (a subscription-based video-on-demand product) – in reducing piracy activity.
2. Is DNS-based batch website blocking an effective piracy control policy?
   1. This task measures the impact of a public supply-side intervention – DNS based website blocking – on digital piracy activity and the use of legal alternatives to piracy.
3. Can a “follow the money” policy effectively reduce the supply of pirated content?
   1. This task measures the impact of another public supply-side intervention – cutting infringing websites’ access to their main revenue source (online advertising) – on the supply of pirated content.

In order to address these questions, we will use various secondary data sources including observational data from experimental and quasi-experimental data from our Industry Partner (IP), survey data from our IP, and observational data from NIELSEN that allows to track online behavior of consumers, and on advertising services associated with piracy websites and legitimate websites.