| How is Digital Piracy Hurting Modern Society? | | |

Introduction Digital Piracy is a huge crime that is large hurting the entertainment business here in the United States and in other countries, but the question I ask myself is how digital piracy hurting modern society? What actions are our governments taking to stop people from downloading illegal music, movies, and software? How much of a profit loss is effecting the companies that are producing this digital material? If someone knows what the punishment is for downloading music, movies, and software would they still do it. This research will aim to understand what is digtal piracy is and why it is that people download illegal software, movies, and music.
Literature review In the article Examine Digital Piracy: Self-Control, Punishment, and Self-Efficacy, the authors introduce what digital piracy is and how it changes on a constant basis. They show how the “United States government has been cooperating in the fight against digital piracy with the software, music and movie industries with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA)” (Zhang, Smith, McDowell, 2009). They discuss how most people think that digital piracy is acceptable, it a soft crime and it does not hurt anyone, and most think that this information should be exchanged freely. The authors also did an online-survey study on college students who were taking Management Information Sciences (MIS) course at a public university in the southern United States in 2006 (Zhang, Smith, McDowell, 2009). The reason college students were used is that piracy is very prevalent in academia, and students use pirated software extensively. The students were asked to complete the survey within a week and a confidentiality statement was included to assure the student that no personal information would be disclosed. A Likert scale was used with a scale of “1” to “5”, 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. Some of the questions subjects were asked had to do with Punishment Severity received, which was used to measure the severity of digital piracy punishment they would get if they were caught downloading illegal software. Other questions were about Self-Efficacy, which is used to find out if students are able to duplicate a copyrighted CD, download authorized software, music and DVD’s. This article had a limited number of people they could surveyed since it was not an entire population. They also should have talked to people that were charged with digital piracy infractions. The survey also gave incentive to who participated, giving an extra point on their final grade if they completed the survey. By doing this, students were encouraged to give any answer just to get the extra point on their final grade. The authors also pointed out were that respondents might not be fully aware that digital piracy could cause great financial loss for not only the artists, but the also the producers, managers, graphic artists and all other involved in the production of copyrighted materials. (Zhang, Smith, McDowell, 2009). In article titled Neutralizations and Rationalization of Digital Piracy: A Qualitative Analysis of University Students. The authors indicate how digital piracy has become a topic of immense concern, so much so, that it has attracted the attention of both legislators and academics (Moore, McMullan, 2009). It also explains what peer-to-peer file sharing (also known as P2P) is, and how it still continues to intrigue both researchers and practitioners in the fields of criminology, economics and computer science. The researchers and practitioners of these fields are interested in this because of the speed at which technology has evolved. It is creating conflicts between users and traditional intellectual property laws. Some people in the music and film industry have put the blame on technology for the lagging sales of compact disk and digital video disks. The authors created a questionnaire that they used in interviews with students that were self- confessed file sharers (Moore, McMullan, 2009). The students were selected from criminal justice and criminology courses were selected from three mid-size universities. These universities were picked from a previous research that the authors conducted on the attitudes of file sharers. (Moore, McMullan, 2009). The authors believed that college students were the best target group because they have easy access to computers and are mostly likely to have moderate or advance computer skills, and to engage in file sharing. The interview format that the authors used was a semi-interview format that they could use to obtain some basic information on the demographic of the students, and the frequency of file sharing activities. The answers received did not support any of the author’s expected results. The Participants age ranged from 18 to 29 years old, 14 of the participants were female and 30 being male. The results of the author’s research shows that people who download copyright materials via P2P networks will not stop there criminal behavior. They also discuss how it makes since that most of the people who use P2P file sharing software are law-abiding citizens, except when downloading copyrighted materials. The article titled Knowledge Of Software Piracy as an Antecedent to Reducing Pirating Behavior. The authors are asking the question “Can legislative and education outreach programs reduce the level of software piracy?”(Moores, Nill, Marcus, 2009,pg1). It also goes in to how much potential revenue relevance that software companies are losing around the world. Some of the legislation that governments around the have created to combat digital piracy is the DCMA, World Trade Organization’s (WTO), Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), and the World Intellectual Property Organizations (WIPO). There have been educational programs since the 1990’s such as ‘Don’t Copy that Floppy’ which was developed by the Software Publisher Alliance (SPA) (Moores, Nill, Marcus, 2009, pg1). There also a site called “TheTrueCross.Org” that outlines the total amount of job losses and money that is lost with all types of counterfeiting and piracy. All these educational programs are designed for people to understand software piracy is a crime and it does have a harmful effect economic consequences and social. The authors investigated an individual’s software piracy behavior by using a survey and borrowing from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Moores, Nill, Marcus, 2009, pg1). The Theory of Planned Behavior suggest that behavior is determined by one’s personal (attitude), social (subjective norms), and volitional (perceived behavioral control) beliefs (Moores, Nill, Marcus, 2009, pg1.) The survey that was created for this was a set of six questions. It was deigned to capture different aspects of software piracy for example legal protection given to the software, major economic and social losses in the U.S. with software piracy. The target sample that was used was business students at a southwestern university and the survey was given to 108 students. All the surveys were returned but 5 very incomplete and leaving just 103 surveys to use. The demographic was 52% males and 48% females. Some of the limitations that we found were that the information they gathered could not be honestly. When they gathered there information after the survey was a possibility that answers that they got were not answered honestly. Another was the communication channel that the knowledge about software piracy was acquired. The article titled Internet Scallywags: A Comparative Analysis of Multiple Forms and Measurements of Digital Piracy. The authors explains how internet based digital piracy has recently become a widespread occurrence (Whitney, 2009, pg. 1). He also goes on to say that if piracy could be decreased by 10% in the United States it would add about 100,00 new jobs and increase tax revenue by $21 billion dollars. The study that was conducted in this research was a combination what has been done in previous studies with software piracy. The author is attempting to find out which form of piracy ( i.e. software, music, movies) and then determine which ones are being downloaded more than the others. There are also other control variables that were introduced in to the study (i.e. broadband internet access and personal income) that the author said has not been used before(Whitney, 2009, pg. 1). This study was conducted at a mid-Atlantic college with a total of 513 students. The students were asked questions as to how often they downloaded files (movies, music, software) without paying for them, if their parents would approve of them downloading illegal movies, music, and/or software, if they knew what the punishment and the severity was if they were caught, what is their income and their parents income, what college major were they taking and what is there class year, and other questions (Whitney, 2009, pg. 6-7). From the results of the research it showed that students that had friends in digital piracy and who had strong parental support for such behavior were more likely to participate in such activities. The results also showed that if students knew that punishment was more than likely in software piracy, then they would not commit the act. The limitations that were brought up in this article were the all the data that was collected was self-reported and that the response on parental support and peer activity were inaccurate it.
Conclusion

Reference page

Zhang, L., Wayne, W. S., & William, C. M. (2009). Examining digital piracy: Self-control, punishment, and self-efficacy. Information Resources Management Journal, 22(1), 24-44. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/215884683?accountid=27655
Moore, R., & McMullan, E. C. (2009). Neutralizations and rationalizations of digital piracy: A qualitative analysis of university students. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 3(1), 441-451. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/89069440?accountid=27655
Trevor, T. M., Nill, A., & Marcus, A. R. (2009). Knowledge of software piracy as an antecedent to reducing pirating behavior. The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 50(1), 82-89. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/232572861?accountid=27655
Whitney, D. G. (2009). Internet scallywags: A comparative analysis of multiple forms and measurements of digital piracy. Western Criminology Review, 10(1), 15-28. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/235106027?accountid=27655