Money from Peer to Peer - an Experiment on File Sharing Behavior under Different Economic Conditions

Quiring, Oliver; Walter, Benedikt von und Atterer, Richard : Money from Peer to Peer - an Experiment on File Sharing Behavior under Different Economic Conditions. 57th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, USA, May 2007.

Abstract

Illegal file sharing on the Internet leads to considerable financial losses for artists and copyright owners as well as producers and sellers of music. Measures to contain this phenomenon were so far rather restrictive. However, there is still a considerable number of illegal systems and users are able to decide quite freely between legal and illegal downloads because illegal downloads are still difficult to sanction. Recent economic approaches account for users' improved bargaining position. They are based on the idea of revenue splitting between professional sellers and peers. In order to test such an innovative business model, we carried out an experiment with 100 undergraduate students forming five small peer-to-peer networks. The networks were confronted with different economic conditions. The results indicate that even experienced file sharers hold favorable attitudes towards revenue splitting. They seem to be willing to adjust their behavior to different economic conditions.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
• Faculties: Munich School of Management; Munich School of Management > Institute for Digital Management and New Media
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• Language: English