Content-sharing platforms’ copyright protection strategies with non-fungible tokens

The growth of content-sharing platforms facilitates the transfer of users to e-commerce sites. However, content-sharing platforms face copyright infringement issues related to content theft and platform invasion, dampening the flow of traffic to e-commerce. Traditional copyright protection methods lack effectiveness and efficiency, which can be solved by Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) stored on a blockchain. This study examines how a content-sharing platform adopts three NFT-based copyright protection strategies: the NFT-based copyright certification strategy to combat content theft, the NFT-based content moderation, and copyrighted material provision strategies to combat platform invasion. Our paper models a two-sided platform with content consumers and suppliers. Platform invasion occurs when suppliers bring copyright-infringing content to the platform, while content theft refers to content suppliers being pirated outside the platform. We identify the optimal combination of platform copyright protection strategies. The platform may adopt the copyright certification strategy to combat content theft. However, we show that the platform cannot benefit from adopting both content moderation and material provision strategies to counter platform invasion if the quantity of infringing materials used by infringers is small and the material provisioning costs of the platform are low. Moreover, there are mutually enhancing effects between content moderation and material provision strategies. Our study emphasizes the importance of NFT-based copyright protection strategies to content-sharing platforms and provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the implications of copyright certification, content moderation, and copyrighted material provision.