Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
In collaboration with a large telecommunications provider, we use a unique dataset on disaggregated household level media consumption to measure the impact of a DNS blocking policy on digital piracy and on a set of legal alternatives not covered by previous literature - TV use, VoD use, and paid channel subscriptions. Our results show that the policy reduced piracy activity and increased the use of some legal alternatives. We also observe that the policy led to increased Google searches for tools for bypassing the blocks. We find correlational evidence that in districts where this behavior was more prevalent, the fraction of active BitTorrent users after the blocks was also higher. Finally, by combining our household level observational data with survey data from a subset of the subscribers, we find that the presence of teenagers in the household decreased the effectiveness of the policy in reducing piracy activity.
Recommended Citation
Reis, Filipa; Godinho de Matos, Miguel; and Ferreira, Pedro, "The Impact of DNS Blocks on Digital Piracy Activity" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 12.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/Economics/Presentations/12
The Impact of DNS Blocks on Digital Piracy Activity
In collaboration with a large telecommunications provider, we use a unique dataset on disaggregated household level media consumption to measure the impact of a DNS blocking policy on digital piracy and on a set of legal alternatives not covered by previous literature - TV use, VoD use, and paid channel subscriptions. Our results show that the policy reduced piracy activity and increased the use of some legal alternatives. We also observe that the policy led to increased Google searches for tools for bypassing the blocks. We find correlational evidence that in districts where this behavior was more prevalent, the fraction of active BitTorrent users after the blocks was also higher. Finally, by combining our household level observational data with survey data from a subset of the subscribers, we find that the presence of teenagers in the household decreased the effectiveness of the policy in reducing piracy activity.