Determinants of Multimedia, Entertainment, and Business Software Copyright Piracy: A Cross-national Study

This paper examines cross-national variations in piracy of U.S. copyright related products in the multimedia, entertainment, and software industry. To determine which economic, legal, and social factors cause the considerable differences in piracy of U.S. copyright industries’ products in individual countries, we tested 4 industry models. We find that for most industries piracy can be explained by the risk profile of the country involved (signalling economic and political stability and growth potential) and the existence of a strong intellectual property rights system. Furthermore, for the four analysed copyright-based industries considerable variation in piracy exists between geographic regions. This study shows that disaggregation of the copyright piracy data by industry is helpful in analysing and understanding piracy.