IP Outreach Research > IP Crime

Reference

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Main Findings

The study found that software piracy intentions were substantially affected by perceived consequences, and moderately affected by social factors. Affect did not have a significant impact on piracy intentions.

Perceived consequences having an impact on piracy intentions were: “possess more software”, “risk of being penalised”, “save time in acquiring software”, “deteriorate my sense of ethics”, “save money”, and “suffer from the absence of support for pirated software”. Effective social pressure influencing an individual’s intention to pirate software originated from family and friends, but not from colleagues.


Habits and facilitating conditions influenced actual piracy behaviour. The relevant conditions that facilitate the act of pirating software were: “inappropriate anti-piracy measures in my institution”, “I know people who can help me to pirate”, and “I know how to access software that can be pirated”.

However, there was no link found between software piracy intentions and actual piracy behaviour, suggesting that either individuals with the bad habit of piracy may find it difficult not to pirate even when having the intention not to pirate anymore, or that individuals having the intention to pirate may be unable to do so because the facilitating conditions hinder/prevent the behaviour.


Software manufacturers and retailers can take the following measures: produce difficult-to-duplicate manuals, customer support for legal users, free/reduced price upgrades, intensive distribution, and reduced prices.

To leverage the effect of social pressure from friends and family, awareness campaigns and anti-piracy policies should go beyond organisational settings in order to cover employees’ friends and family who might have more weight than colleagues in influencing individuals’ intention to pirate software. Institutions should create an environment promoting anti-piracy behaviour, by way of advertisements, brochures and promotions about anti-piracy, coupled with codes and policies specifying that copying software from friends and family members is illegal.

Given the absence of impact of affect on piracy intentions, the authors recommend that efforts to change attitudes toward piracy/increase awareness that illegal software copying is unethical be coupled with strong software copying policies clearly stating penalties and criminal liabilities. Such codes of ethics and copyright polices should be widely circulated among faculty, staff and students and regularly enforced.

Regular software in-house audits should be performed to prevent software piracy habits from becoming entrenched, and business processes of acquiring legal software should be optimised to minimise delays (and thus incentives to acquire needed software illegally).

[Date Added: Oct 22, 2008 ]