デジタル情報財の違法コピー問題とネットワーク外部性
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概要
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We suppose that Information Technology industry is classified into four sections ((1) Telecommunication infrastructure, (2) Hardware, (3) Software, (4) Contents service), it is symbolic that the historical lawsuit of Anti-trust law has occurred in each section ((1) AT & T, (2) IBM, (3) Microsoft) until now. In recent years, not only the Anti-trust lawsuit but also the problem related to Copyright law has arisen in the Information Technology industry. The Piracy problem of digital information goods with copyrighted have already occurred on the Internet. In the case of illigal copying and selling by the supplier, it can punish for copyright infringement and a claim for damages produced by pirated copies is possible. However, the distribution of pirated copies among indivitual users is impossible for proving the illicit activities and amount of damage as a matter of fact, since it is private use of many and unspecified individuals even if an illegal copy is made.If network externality is taken into consideration, piracy has two economic effects on software publishers. The first effect, increasing piracy leads to a fall in direct sales. The second effect, increasing pirates would boost the demand for the legally supplied software by increasing size of the installed-base. This opposite effects imply that the trade-off relation between losses from reduction of direct sales and benefits arises from the effect which enlarges the network scale formed among the users will exist.In this paper, we consider the piracy problem and hardware taxation system in the present of network externalities. We show that three main results: first, pirates exist in the market equilibrium in the case of no hardware taxation; second, despite the fact that a higher tax rate increases tax revenue transferred to the software firm, the hardware tax rate which maximizes profit of software firm is lower level than the hardware tax rate which maximize tax revenue; and third, a tax on hardware indeed reduces the illigal use of software, but it dose not enhance social welfare.
- 日本地域学会の論文