Controlling Digital Piracy Via Domain Name System Blocks : A Natural Experiment

Using a household level dataset, we measure the impact of a website blocking agreement based on DNS filtering on digital piracy and the consumption of pay-TV, Video on Demand, and paid entertainment channels. Our results show that blocking access to copyright infringing websites reduces Internet traffic, which proxies piracy activity. We found no statistically significant changes in the consumption of the paid legal alternatives considered, only a very modest increase in TV viewership. These results suggest that the website blocks were effective in curbing digital piracy but did not benefit offline legal alternatives. We explore the heterogeneity of these results with regard to the households’ pre-blocks usage intensity of BitTorrent and demographic characteristics. We contribute to the literature on digital piracy and the effectiveness of piracy control strategies and inform policy makers and industry practitioners about the benefits and limitations of this policy