earticle

영어

Extant literature on digital piracy has extensively focused on media content whose value is less-sensitive to the timing of consumption (e.g., movies and music songs). The studies have commonly examined how piracy affects demand for digital goods such as software products and digital songs (Bounie et al., 2006; De Vany & Walls, 2007; Danaher et al., 2010; Bai & Waldfogel, 2012; Hoof, 2016; Herz & Kiljański, 2018; Lu et al., 2021). Some empirical studies on digital piracy examined file sharing websites, where individuals can upload and download the files on online website whenever they want. However, there is lack of academic works that examine the piracy of digital content whose value is heavily limited in time and requires real-time consumption such as live sports games (e.g., baseball, baseball, soccer matches). Especially, piracy on live sports broadcasting and its potential societal consequences have not been documented yet. As the value of sports broadcast has plunged after the game ends (Hoof, 2016), people tend to pirate sports broadcasting through illegal sports broadcasting websites when legal channels for the matches are not available or accessible in time. In general, such illegal sports broadcasting websites are affiliated with (or sponsored by) illegal gambling sites. As such, this research attempts to evaluate whether the digital piracy of time-sensitive content exposes users to illegal activities and make them engage in. Consequently, this study aims at addressing the following salient research questions: (1) Does the prevention of time-sensitive content livestreaming from public distribution channels increase the chance of digital piracy?; (2) If so, does the digital piracy of time-sensitive content increase illegal gambling? In September 2020, a leading television network in Korea stopped selling the copyrights of English Football Leagues (EPL) broadcasting to other media outlets and started charging for the content views. Using this event as an exogenous shock on illicit sports streaming site visits, we investigate the causal relationship between illicit sports streaming site visits (i.e., digital piracy) and the occurrences of illegal gambles. We collected daily and individual level of illegal gambling data from an illegal sports broadcasting streaming between August 10, 2019, and May 23, 2021. We choose an illegal steaming site to collect illegal gambling data on EPL. We gathered data on user ID, gambling types, sports gambling team names, and measures since August 10, 2019, with match-user-daily level. Total collect data is more than 20,000. The increasing rate in illegal gambling before and after exogenous is 132 percent. In addition, the increasing rate in the number of gamblers is 65 percent. Our preliminary results show that the increase in illicit streaming website visitors indeed leads to more illicit sports gamblers over illegal sports gambling sites. The main research findings will bear significant contributions to extant literature in theorizing the digital piracy of time-sensitive content and its potential societal consequences. This study is currently being under development. For the further investigations of the research, we plan to complete the following requirements. First, we will set up control and treatment group for finding causal relationship. Second, we will expand our dataset by extending period from August 14, 2021, and May 30, 2022.