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Article Dans Une Revue Revue d'économie industrielle Année : 2022

How Can Proprietary Software Firms Take Advantage Over Open Source Communities? Another Story of Profitable Piracy

Résumé

This paper analyzes the strategic incentives of a proprietary software (PS) firm to manipulate software copy protection in response to the diffusion of pirate proprietary software (PPS) copies, as well as software compatibility/incompatibility with an alternative open source software (OSS) solution. We show that the existence of software piracy enables the PS firm to achieve higher profits than when piracy is prevented. A key mechanism at work is that investing in software copy protection allows the PS firm to increase the price of its PS product. From a regulatory point of view, we find that software compatibility with the OSS solution is a necessary condition to achieve a welfare-improving equilibrium, whereas the welfare-enhancing feature of piracy is not always proved.
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Dates et versions

hal-03718319 , version 1 (08-07-2022)

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Citer

T. Le Texier, Mourad Zeroukhi. How Can Proprietary Software Firms Take Advantage Over Open Source Communities? Another Story of Profitable Piracy. Revue d'économie industrielle , 2022, 177 (1), pp.103-136. ⟨10.4000/rei.11288⟩. ⟨hal-03718319⟩
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