Browsing by Author "Peukert, Christian"
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- Catch me if you can: effectiveness and consequences of online copyright enforcementPublication . Aguiar, Luis; Claussen, Jörg; Peukert, ChristianWe evaluate the unexpected shutdown of kino.to, a major platform for unlicensed video streaming in the German market. Using highly disaggregated clickstream data in a difference-in-differences setting, we compare the web behavior of 20,000 consumers in Germany and three control countries. We find that this intervention was not very effective in reducing unlicensed consumption or encouraging licensed consumption, mainly because users quickly switch to alternative unlicensed sites. We highlight that the shutdown additionally had important unintended externalities. Individuals who never visited kino.to and who additionally clicked on news articles that covered the shutdown increased their visits to piracy websites substantially. We show that this effect largely comes from articles that explicitly mention alternative websites or suggest that users do not have to fear legal consequences from unlicensed streaming. Finally, we document that the unlicensed video streaming market is much more fragmented after the shutdown, potentially affecting future interventions, at least in the short run.We argue that our results can be helpful to understand why online piracy rates are still high, despite a plethora of enforcement efforts.
- Follow the money: online piracy and self-regulation in the advertising industryPublication . Batikas, Michail; Claussen, Jörg; Peukert, ChristianWe study the effects of a self-regulation effort, orchestrated by the European Commission in 2016 and finalized in 2018, that aims to reduce advertising revenues for publishers of copyright infringing content. Data on the third-party HTTP requests made by a large number of piracy websites lets us observe the relations of the piracy and advertising industry over time. We compare these dynamics to a control group of non-advertising services which are not subject to the self-regulation. Our results suggest that the effort is limited in its effectiveness. On average, the number of piracy websites that make requests to EU-based advertising services does not change significantly. Only when we allow for heterogeneity in the popularity of third-party services, we find that the number of piracy websites that interact with the most popular EU-based advertising services decreases by 42%. We do not find evidence that non-EU-based advertising services react to the self-regulation. This implies that only a small share of the firms in the market comply with self-regulation in a way that is visible in our data. We also do not find evidence that the demand for piracy websites decreases due to this “follow the money” initiative.
- The welfare effects of mobile internet access: evidence from Roam-Like-at-HomePublication . Quinn, Martin; Matos, Miguel Godinho de; Peukert, ChristianWe evaluate the welfare effects of the Roam-Like-At-Home regulation, which has drastically reduced the price of accessing the mobile Internet for residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) when travelling abroad in the EEA. Our estimates using individual-level consumption data suggest that consumer surplus increased by around € 2.44 per user and travel day. We show that around 40% of the consumer surplus gains originated from a reduction in deadweight loss, that is, new users accessing the mobile Internet. We also highlight that the regulation had a heterogeneous impact on consumers, varying with usage intensity and the reason for travel (business vs. leisure).
- Video killed the radios star? Online music videos and recorded music salesPublication . Kretschmer, Tobias; Peukert, ChristianWe study the heterogeneous effects of online video platforms on the sales volume and sales distribution of recorded music. Identification comes from two natural experiments in Germany. In 2009, virtually all music videos were blocked from YouTube as a result of a legal dispute. In 2013, the dedicated platform Vevo entered the market, making videos of a large number of artists available overnight. Our estimates suggest that restricting (enabling) access to online videos decreases (increases) recorded music sales on average by about 5%-10%. We show that the effect operates independently of the nature of video content, suggesting that user-generated content is as effective as official content. Moreover, we highlight heterogeneity in this effect: online music videos disproportionally benefit sales of new artists and sales of mainstream music.