Streaming Services and Digital Piracy among Students: An Experimental Approach

Piracy as the use of copyrighted works of art without permission of the author appears to be a serious problem for rightsholders for several centuries. Digital piracy, in turn, is a relatively new phenomenon that arose at the end of the 20th century, along with the spread of the Internet and it`s speed. In terms of the prevalence of digital piracy, Russia is at one of the first places. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of individuals' awareness of the risks of digital piracy and the benefits of consuming licensed content on attitudes, intent and level of acceptable content price. An experimental method of research was used. The experimental design consisted of a random distribution of respondents into two experimental groups and a control group. In one experimental group, the attention of the respondent was focused on the inconvenience of using so called pirated services and the associated risks (identity theft, viruses), in another - on the positive aspects of using licensed services (low cost, best user experience), the third text was neutral. To determine the optimal price of the content, the "Gabor Granger" was applied. During the analysis, the effect of the experimental variable on attitudes and intent was not found. Groups of attitudes were identified that affect the intention: social, economic and legal. There was no sex or age influence on intent or attitudes.