Trading higher software piracy for higher profits: The case of phantom piracy

R. Gopal, A. Gupta

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper analytically explores the effect of software bundling on software piracy. We focus on piracy at individual user level where several individuals illegitimately share a single copy of software. We develop an economic model of software piracy with bundling of two products that are not identically distributed. We derive results for optimal level of piracy and profits for individual products as well as for the bundle. Our results indicate that bundling results in a level of piracy that is always less than the piracy level of one of the products of the bundle. However, it is possible to trade off the piracy level of one product for overall higher profits, i.e., a seller can derive higher profits even with higher levels of piracy for one of the products in the bundle. We derive exact bounds for two cases: (i) where piracy level of the bundle is smaller than the piracy level of both the products in the bundle, and (ii) where the profits from a bundle are always higher even with higher piracy level than one of the products.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2002
EditorsRalph H. Sprague
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages2491-2498
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)0769514359
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2002
Event35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2002 - Big Island, United States
Duration: Jan 7 2002Jan 10 2002

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Volume2002-January
ISSN (Print)1530-1605

Other

Other35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2002
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBig Island
Period1/7/021/10/02

Keywords

  • Computer aided software engineering
  • Computer crime
  • Computer industry
  • Globalization
  • Imaging phantoms
  • Industrial training
  • Information technology
  • Licenses
  • Manufacturing industries
  • Software tools

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