Software piracy: an analysis of protection strategies
Management Science
International Software Piracy: Analysis of Key Issues and Impacts
Information Systems Research
Digital music and online sharing: software piracy 2.0?
Communications of the ACM - A game experience in every application
Free Riding on Gnutella Revisited: The Bell Tolls?
IEEE Distributed Systems Online
Influences on cooperation in BitTorrent communities
Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Economics of peer-to-peer systems
To purchase or to pirate software: an empirical study
Journal of Management Information Systems
Digital Piracy: A Competitive Analysis
Marketing Science
Account-Sharing Detection Through Keystroke Dynamics Analysis
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management
Marketing Science
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Social sharing of information goods---wherein a single good is purchased and shared through a network of acquaintances such as friends or coworkers---is a significant concern for the providers of these goods. The effect of social sharing on firm pricing and profits depends critically on two elements: the structure of the underlying consumer network and the mechanism used by groups to decide whether to purchase at a given price. We examine the effect of social sharing under different network structures (decentralized, centralized, and complete), which reflect a range of market conditions. Moreover, we draw from the mechanism design literature to examine several approaches to group decision making. Our results suggest that a firm can benefit from increased social sharing if the level of sharing is already high, enabling a pricing strategy targeted primarily at sharing groups rather than individuals. However, the point at which sharing becomes marginally beneficial for a firm depends on both the distribution of group sizes (which derives from the network structure) and the group decision mechanism. Additional insights are obtained when we extend the model to capture homophily in group formation and the potential that a subset of consumers will never share for ethical reasons.