Punish, seduce and persuade: an empirical assessment of anti-piracy interventions

This research has studied the functioning of interventions that are meant to tackle digital piracy. To do so, two new empirical studies were performed, supplemented with findings from scientific literature. The results demonstrate that the ‘classical’ awareness campaigns have no influence on the scope of digital piracy. More evidence is found for the use of deterrent or seductive interventions. Still, the changes to the behavior will likely be somewhat limited. Also, practical obstacles hamper the functioning of deterrent interventions. The findings give policy makers a concrete toolset to select and design appropriate interventions that are able to reduce digital piracy.