Evolutionary Game Analysis of Copyright Protection for NFT Digital Works Considering Collusive Behavior

Abstract

The non-fungible tokens trading of digital content works, as an emerging business model, has rapidly developed while also posing challenges to current copyright protection. The NFT infringement incidents in recent years have exposed many issues, such as lack of government regulation, imperfect copyright protection mechanisms, and illegal profits from service platforms. Considering the collusive behavior during the NFT minting process, this study uses evolutionary game theory to model a game composed of three populations: digital content creators; NFT service platforms; and government regulatory agencies. We derived and analyzed the replication dynamics of the game to determine the evolutionary stability strategy. In addition, combined with numerical simulations, we also analyzed the impact of individual factors on the stability of system evolution. This study identifies that the incentives and fines set by the government must be above a certain threshold in order for game results to develop toward an ideal equilibrium state, and the government can try to improve the efficiency of obtaining and updating market information and set dynamic punishment and reward mechanisms based on this. This study also found that excessive rewards are not conducive to the government fulfilling its own regulatory responsibilities. In this regard, the government can use information technology to reduce the cost of regulation, thereby partially offsetting the costs brought about by incentive mechanisms. In addition, the government can also enhance the governance participation of platforms and creators to improve the robustness of digital copyright protection by strengthening media construction and cultivating public copyright awareness. This study helps to understand the complex relationship between NFT service platforms, digital content creators, and government regulatory authorities and proves the practical meaning of countermeasures and suggestions for improving government digital copyright regulations.