Corporate responses to online music piracy: Strategic lessons for the challenge of additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, offers exciting opportunities for business but threatens to bring with it a new generation of prosumers (i.e., individuals who are both producers and consumers) who can infringe copyrights within their own homes based upon downloaded, digital designs. This article presents an analogous discussion of the music industry's war against online piracy to the hypothetical threat additive manufacturing poses to traditional industry. The author examines examples from contemporary media and academic literature to identify five indicative concepts that specialist and non-specialist managers should acknowledge in developing effective anti-piracy strategies: changing consumer expectations, the negative impact of legal recourse, the pervasiveness of new technology, the de facto stalemate of piracy, and the importance of networks. The author considers how these lessons can inform anti-piracy strategies and guide managers and entrepreneurs in protecting existing rights and engaging with new market paradigms.