IP Outreach Research > IP Crime
Reference
| Title: | It's not really theft!: personal and workplace ethics that enable software piracy |
| Author: | Darryl A Seale [University of Alabama in Huntsville], Michael Polakowski [University of Arizona] and Sherry Schneider [University of New South Wales] |
| Source: | Behaviour and Information Technology 17, no. 1: 27-40 |
| Year: | 1998 |
Details
| Subject/Type: | Piracy |
| Focus: | Software |
| Country/Territory: | United States of America |
| Objective: | To examine predictors of software piracy. |
| Sample: | 589 university employees |
| Methodology: | Survey |
Main Findings
While 44% of the respondents reported that they had received unauthorised software copies from their friends or relatives and 31% admitted to having made unauthorised copies of software, they estimated that about two thirds of computer owners would have unauthorised copies.
The strongest direct predictors of software piracy were the attitudes or social norms one holds concerning piracy behaviour (respondents agreeing that using unauthorised software is not really theft are significantly more likely to pirate). Other direct predictors of software copying are the perceptions of the expertise required to copy software (the more difficult somebody perceives piracy to be, the less likely this individual is to engage in it), gender (men are more likely to pirate than women) and computer usage (respondents reporting to use computers both at work and at home are more likely to pirate software).
The ease of theft (of software), people's sense of the proportional value of software (i.e. if individuals perceive software pricing as unfair, then they are likely to report social norms in favour of piracy) and various demographic variables (such as age or employment position) were found to influence software piracy indirectly.
Based on the authors' findings, possible avenues to reduce software piracy include: raising the perceived value of software or lowering its price and changing the public image of software pirates thorough a public relations campaign.
[Date Added: Aug 12, 2008 ]