Teaching Digital Piracy

Abstract

US education policy encourages the use of computers and the Internet at both the college and high school levels. As a consequence, students have had better access to technologies to illicitly share copyrighted music, causing a decline in sales from the traditional music store retail channel. Using a panel of counties over the 1994-2004 period, I find evidence that the number of music stores fell when high schools received subsidies for Internet connections and it fell faster where college enrollment was higher. This intervention in education policy could have contributed greatly to the decline in the music industry.