IP Outreach Research > IP Crime
Reference
Title: | Determinants of music copyright violations on the university campus |
Author: | Eric P Chiang [Florida Atlantic University], Djeto Assane [University of Nevada Las Vegas] |
Source: | Journal of Cultural Economics 31, no. 3: 187-204 |
Year: | 2007 |
Details
Subject/Type: | Piracy |
Focus: | Music |
Country/Territory: | United States of America |
Objective: | To study university students' attitudes toward music piracy, and in particular how the use of enforcement and economic incentives affect subsequent behaviour. |
Sample: | 472 university students |
Methodology: | Survey |
Main Findings
58% of the respondents admitted to file sharing. The principal reasons given for file sharing were, in order of importance: cost, time (faster to acquire music via file sharing) and variety (file sharing offering larger access to songs). Most students (76%) do not support shutting down file-sharing services and 58%, 49% and 40% consider file-sharing unfair to music artists, music distributors and music stores, respectively. Students assessed the probability of being legally prosecuted for music piracy as quite low (13%).
Students are both sensitive to risk and to economic incentives: the higher the risk of being apprehended, the lower the percentage of file-shared music is relative to the total music collections; the lower the willingness to pay, the higher the percentage of file-shared music is relative to the total music collection.
While economic incentives and risk perceptions alone are unlikely to fully reverse the propensity to engage in file sharing, a combination of effective enforcement actions and attractive legal alternatives with sufficiently large selections and low prices could go a long way towards reducing piracy.
[Date Added: Aug 12, 2008 ]