Pirates have plundered the web since music went digital, but researchers have recently discovered a new blockade.
A team of researchers from Duke University and Rice University found that lifting Digital Rights Management restrictions may actually decrease piracy in the music industry, as outlined in their paper “Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management Protection.”
“There is a flip side of DRM that conventional wisdom overlooks,” said Dinah Vernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice University. “When you remove DRM, you can make people switch from pirating to buying. There will always be some consumers who pirate and some consumers who buy, but when you remove the restrictions, the people in between will purchase music legally.”
DRM software is used to prevent illegal downloading and copying of music and other digital files. The software implements such measures as limiting the number of computers to which music can be downloaded.
Vernik conducted the study with the help of Duke researchers, Preyas Desai, Spencer R. Hassell professor of marketing at the Fuqua School of Business, and Devavrat Purohit, F.M. Kirby research fellow and professor of marketing at the Fuqua School of Business.
The study’s findings are published in the November/December issue of the journal Marketing Science, according to a news release Oct. 7.
Researchers applied game theory to determine DRM’s effects on music piracy. Evaluating the costs and benefits to consumers and companies led to potential outcomes based on whether or not consumers used DRM, according to the study.
“We developed a mathematical model that allows us to see what people will do if we assume that they will do what is best for them in terms of economic interests,” Desai said. “We predicted what we can expect them to do and what we can expect companies to do.”
The team’s scientific approach led to findings that oppose conventional wisdom, challenging previous theories with anaytical evidence.
“We approached the analysis in a rigorous manner, rather than just idle speculation about what we think is going on,” Purohit said.
In the researchers’ analysis, they found that DRM can actually hurt its own users—only people who purchase music legally suffer the cost and restrictions of the software. DRM decreases the quality of music, decreases competition between downloads and CDs and inconveniences users, Desai said.
Elimination of DRM restrictions would create more competition between legal downloads and CDs, which would in turn lower prices and piracy, as people are motivated to pirate music by its high prices, according to the study.
“CD sales are declining in general, but they are still a huge portion of the market,” Purohit said. “The restrictions make downloads too difficult so people buy CDs, but with the removal of the restrictions, prices go down everywhere because of the competition of the market.”
Although their paper does not offer a solution or replacement for DRM, researchers discussed what options might be most effective.
“Removal of DRM is in [a] sense a solution to piracy,” Vernik said. “There will always be pirates.... Increasing the moral something of piracy might be more effective than the DRM itself.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.