디지털 저작권 관리를 통한 효과적인 소프트웨어 보호전략: 한국 기업의 사례를 중심으로

Abstract

This study investigates the effect implementation strategy of Digital Rights Management technology on a firm’s profit. We propose a simple economic model that examines the effectiveness of putting Digital Rights Management protection on the update releases of software products. The model suggests that the amount of software updates with Digital Rights Management protection should be greater than a threshold to increase the profit in an effective magnitude. The threshold of updates depends on price, quality gap, piracy rate, and search cost of pirated products. Firms can effectively manage the amount of updates and technological protection based on the combination of these factors. We discuss how these predictions of the economic model can explain two cases of representative Korean software firms. This study shows that several findings of the economic model can perhaps better explain the dynamics and effectiveness of Digital Rights Management strategies exercised by Korean firms. Based on these applications of the economic model to the real examples, this work suggests several managerial and policy-related implications