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One Sail Fits All? A Psychographic Segmentation of Digital Pirates

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Abstract

This paper focuses on segmenting digital movie and TV series pirates and on investigating the effectiveness of piracy-combatting measures i.e., legal and educational strategies, in light of these segments. To address these research objectives, two online studies were conducted. First, 1277 valid responses were gathered with an online survey. Four pirate segments were found based on differing combinations of attitude toward piracy, ethical evaluation of piracy and feelings of guilt. The anti-pirate, conflicted pirate, cavalier pirate, and die-hard pirate can be placed on a continuum of increasing pirating frequency, subjective norm, pirating self-efficacy, habit, and decreasing in perceived harm, respectively. The segments also differ in deontological and teleological orientations. Second, in an experimental mixed design, we find that the educational strategy is more effective than the legal strategy in lowering pirating intentions for the conflicted and cavalier pirate. However, both strategies fail at lowering intentions of the die-hard pirate, although perceived harm and perceived impunity were significantly influenced. These findings offer a more profound understanding of pirate segments and how they react differently to piracy-combatting measures. As a result, better strategies can be developed to control digital piracy.

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Notes

  1. Involvement of minors Minors below age 16 were involved in both studies 1 and 2. The ethical protocol of the authors’ university with respect to scientific research involving minors states that research including minors may be conducted only if the involvement of minors is relevant to the research issue and only on the conditions that (a) the stress imposed on the minor is minimal, (b) informed consent is given by either the minor’s parents or legal guardian or, if the research activities take place at or via the minor’s educational institution or another entity with which the minor is affiliated, that institution grants written permission for participation in the study, and (c) the minor participates willingly and has the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time. As the study wishes to investigate whether age differences exist in piracy behavior, the inclusion of minors is relevant to the research issue. This study complies with all guidelines imposed by the ethical protocol and has been approved by the university’s ethical committee. The authors were advised to enclose a message at the end of the questionnaire informing the minor about the illegal nature of torrent downloading, the dangers and risks involved, and appropriate online behavior in general. The message concluded by stating that, if the minor had any questions regarding the content of the questionnaire or online behavior in general, he or she should contact the researchers or talk to parents, teachers, or counselors.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for this valuable suggestion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Charlotte Emily De Corte & Patrick Van Kenhove

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  1. Charlotte Emily De Corte
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Correspondence to Charlotte Emily De Corte.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Glossary

Term

Definition

Digital piracy

The illegal procurement of infringed copyrighted digital media files. In this study, it refers to procuring infringed movies and TV shows by use of BitTorrent downloading

Digital media

Digitized music and video files in various formats such as .MP3, .WAV, .WMA, .MP4, .AVI,…

Peer-to-peer (P2P) network

A computer network wherein each connected computer can act as a server (i.e., seeder) as well as a client (i.e., leecher) for other computers in the network (i.e., peers) without the use of a central infrastructure

(Bit) Torrent

(Bit) Torrent downloading

(Bit)torrent is the dominant P2P file-sharing protocol and generally operates by splitting content (i.e., files) into several small pieces that can each be downloaded by and from different peers. Information about the files to be shared (i.e., metadata) and information about the tracker are called (Bit)Torrents

(Bit) Torrent client

A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the bit torrent protocol. Every client is capable of requesting and transmitting any kind of computer file over the network using the protocol. Examples include Vuze Inc. and BitTorrent Inc

(Bit) Torrent tracker

Trackers contain information about all peers that currently possess pieces of a particular file. Trackers coordinate the downloads but do not contain any content. Examples include The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, and Sumotracker

(Bit) Torrent index site

Websites that contain an index of torrent files and act as search engines through which torrents can be downloaded are called torrent sites. Examples include The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, Torrentz, and Mininova (which offers only legally redistributable media)

Streaming

Streaming is a media delivery method. During streaming, a part of the data is buffered so the file can be played. This way the audiovisual media can be consumed without downloading the entire file. Examples of streaming websites include Spotify and Netflix

Appendix 2: Ethical Dilemma

“A promising yet very experimental treatment for cancer is being developed, but has severe side-effects. In order to test the treatment you have to conduct tests that can make the participants very sick and could lead to premature death. What do you do?”

  1. A.

    I test the treatment

  2. B.

    I do not test the treatment

Appendix 3: Stimuli

Legal strategy (translated from Dutch)

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De Corte, C.E., Van Kenhove, P. One Sail Fits All? A Psychographic Segmentation of Digital Pirates. J Bus Ethics 143, 441–465 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2789-8

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