ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of copyright infringement on participation in the cultural industries. The recorded music, film, and book publishing industries share some basic features, namely they supply information goods with cultural content. The nature of cultural consumption, unlike many other goods and services, means that consumers need some basic knowledge and prior consumption experiences, which partially blurs the role of standard economic variables in explaining consumption, and stress other such as education or time availability. The chapter briefly reviews the findings of the economic literature on copyright infringement in recorded music, films and books. It provides the empirical analysis. The chapter analyzes the cultural consumer in Spain, and putting forward an empirical model followed by the estimation results. It highlights cross-consumption and copyright infringement effects. The economic literature on information goods hypothesizes ambiguous results on the effect of copyright infringement on cultural consumption.
