Piracy of Digital Content

This book studies digital piracy - the infringement of copyrighted content (such as music, films, software, broadcasting, books, etc.) - where the end product does not involve the use of hard media, such as CDs and DVDs. It presents the unique economic properties of markets for pirated digital products, where the existence of a large number of suppliers willing to provide pirated content at virtually no cost poses new and difficult challenges to copyright owners and policy makers in combating that piracy. These economic features, together with rapid technological developments, create special and unique problems to policy makers and the large number of actors involved in different jurisdictions. This book also provides an illustrative, in-depth case study of the sports rights owners sector, highlighting how it is affected by digital piracy.