Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Era

<p>The protection of copyright in the digital era is a very interesting problem for discussion and investigation. Although unauthorized music downloading is illegal, the majority of individuals have downloaded music for free online. An increasing number of unlicensed downloads are taking place in private houses around the world. Why people do not abide by the law? One of the reasons is that probability of being caught is too low. But there are also other reasons.</p><p>Two different models exist. Under the instrumental economic approach, individuals refrain from unlawful behavior because the costs of the unlawful behavior are higher than the benefits, while in the normative conception, individuals are law abiding because they believe the law is just.</p><p>The goal of this paper is to analyse the behavior of content consumers on the internet. Drawing on different literature and new data, we examine the impact of copyright litigation and the interaction between copyright norms and enforcement. We also demonstrate how norms influence behavior and the sensitivity of respondents to different degrees of copyright enforcement. We devote particular attention to differences between regular users of file-sharing technology and individuals who have never downloaded unlicensed music files.</p><p>The conflict between litigation and social norms sets the stage for today&rsquo;s highly polarized copyright law debate. Studying piracy is question has been widely discussed in specialized literature. But research on piracy is inherently difficult because the behavior in question is illegal or at least stigmatized. It is particularly interesting to study the problem of copyright in Russia. Evaluations of illegal music downloading and their association with downloading behavior were examined using the sample of 357 individuals. Like many researchers in Russia, we have faced difficulty in obtaining data. We have put a survey with the questions on one of the internet sites that provides such a service.</p><p>The empirical research indicates several important results and trends. Even in the situation of severe procopyright sanctions and the increased perceive risk to be caught substantial number of individuals (22% of the respondents) would continue to download files for free online. Many individuals share a belief that file swapping should be legal and that the copyright holders violate their right to have an access to the files on the internet.&nbsp;The majority of our respondents don&rsquo;t consider illegal downloads morally wrong. Therefore, non-formal norms on the internet have a great influence on the users&#39; behavior.</p>