To RIAA, From the Gulf, Legal Options Perform Worst Here
What would work best against digital piracy, in a country which is culturally very different from the States? This was the question, researchers wanted to address. To no surprise, just as in US, legal options against the pirates do not help at all, but two other factors seem to significantly help.
In a developing Gulf country filled with moderate and conservative Muslims, piracy is just a very normal affair. Pirated CDs and DVDs could be easily obtained, though not on public display after recent pressure from US through WTO etc. The cultural differences between this country and USA are well documented and are several folds. This raised the question to the researchers, if this cultural change will give a different way to approach the fight against digital piracy.
In a business college in Kuwait, researchers recruited 12 classes of students (319 students). They were then split into four groups with each group consisting of a freshman, a sophomore and a junior level class in it. All groups were given a pre-questionnaire at the beginning of the semester, which evaluated their intention to pirate in the near future. At the ending of the semester, except for one group (control group) every other group got a treatment (a statement being read in the class). The legal/law group was informed about the new laws/regulations/enforcements of new laws related to digital piracy. The religion group was informed about a new edict/fatwa which considers digital piracy to be immoral from a religious point of view. The last group, awareness group was informed about the consequences of piracy. Upon the “treatment”, all of the groups were administered the post-questionnaire, which again evaluated their intention to pirate in the near future.
The researchers expected that all the three treatment groups would experience a significant decrease in the intention to pirate, however it turned out that religion and awareness were significantly successful in reducing the intention to pirate, while the legal group showed little to no change, just like the control group. The results are shown in the table below, where the intention is a number from 1 to 7, with 7 being the highest intention to pirate.
|
Intention at Pre-Questionnaire
|
Intention at Post-Questionnaire
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Control Group |
4.63
|
4.42
|
| Law Group |
4.57
|
4.55
|
| Religion Group |
4.64
|
3.86
|
| Awareness Group |
4.61
|
3.76
|
As seen in the table above and by statistical analysis, awareness was the most effective approach, while legal options were least effective. Studies conducted in the US and the real world confirms this. There was an increase in piracy in the year following the legal action by RIAA against 382 random chosen users. Two of the most famous legal cases in this area: Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas, have invited very high penalties and are still pending. These cases have received heavy media publicity as well, but have not deterred the pirates. This study again confirms that legal options are not the best method to fight digital piracy. Unlike other offenses, these mostly happen with very less trace and millions of people are involved in this.
This study, however introduces one new component to RIAA, religion. Kuwait being a conservative Muslim country (the study participants had a 5.7 out of 7 for a religiousness scale), religion seems to easily work. This strategy is nothing new to this area, a satellite TV company faced heavy problem with its users using advanced receivers to break the encryption; the company handled the problem by broadcasting advertisements suggesting that these types of acts were immoral and against the teaching of Islamic principles and found success with it.
Don’t be surprised if your pastor in the church is talking about piracy in the coming months, RIAA is behind it!
Journal Reference: doi:10.1016/j.tele.2009.12.002
Image Credit: Flickr
