Enforcement sharing and commercial piracy

This paper uses a strategic entry-deterrence framework to analyze the effects of enforcement sharing between the government and the monopolist in dealing with commercial copyright piracy. The monopolist is the incumbent firm and is responsible for monitoring the illegal operations of a commercial pirate, the possible entrant, who illegally reproduces and sells unauthorized copies of the monopolist's product. The monopolist bears the monitoring cost and the government is responsible for setting a penalty. We show that even when enforcement is shared the socially optimal penalty may result in no piracy in equilibrium only if the government is sensitive to piracy.