The purpose of this study was to identify factors that shape the attitudes leading someone to commit digital piracy. While most scholarship has focused on piracy behavior in general and how to impede it, this paper hopes that by identifying these factors, steps could be taken to intercept these attitudes and behaviors, thus reducing digital piracy.  I found the findings interesting when thinking about the MPA's 2005 Piracy report, which identifies statistical information about the average pirate.  This report is critical to my own research as it identifies the attitudes and behavior leading to committing piracy.  If Hollywood were to pay more attention to the behavioral factors that are involved, their fight might be completely different.  

 

One can infer from the results of the study that certain cognitive beliefs, active beliefs (such as happiness and excitement), age and subjective norms influence the general attitude towards committing digital piracy. Key issues at the heart of this study are the attitudes toward digital piracy as well as the study of ethical behavior.

 

The authors introduce two methods that have been instrumental in the current fight against piracy - preventives and deterrents. Preventives are simply that - preventive measures put in place that make it so difficult for pirates in order to wear them out and tire them of the process of trying to commit digital piracy. Deterrents try to persuade you with the threat of legal or other kinds of force so that you don't even try to commit digital piracy in the first place. For example, if you hear about someone who has been prosecuted for illegal file-sharing or downloading you might be less likely to participate know what consequences await you. Piracy losses have increased exponentially, indicating that the above strategies are failing. That is why this report is so important - knowing the factors that influence this behavior could lead to a better understanding and creation of measures to eliminate the threat to copyrighted content. What is also interesting of note is that a number of studies have indicated that a vast majority do not see the act of piracy as a crime or an ethical concern.

At the conclusion of the study, two very important cognitive beliefs were identified by a number of subjects:

-digital media is overpriced or the individual wants to save money

-'i won't get caught'

 

Other important conclusions:

Significant others generally supported illegal downloading, thereby influencing subjects. This was consistently the strongest factor affecting individuals behavior. The majority of people studied did not see the issue of digital piracy as much of an issue. Subjects generally felt excited and happy engaging in these acts. Moral judgement and gender not found to be an influence of people's attitudes.

 

(Please note - I had prepared a much longer citation for this article, however it exceeded the 4000 character limit. I had to cut out the middle unfortunately).