Information Industries and Digital Piracy: An Economic Analysis of Intellectual Property Law

The article presents an economic analysis of the protection of intellectual property in Mexico. The article develops a war of attrition game theory model, presenting different scenarios of industrial organization for information industries. The article shows that with the existence of copyright, the dominant strategy of industry is to combat piracy for the purpose of securing monopoly power. Using data from the National Survey on the Use of Time (inegi, by its Spanish-language acronym), of the article develops a profile of media and cultural products consumption and access to digital technologies. In Mexico, 21.1 % of the population is in extreme digital poverty.