Singular justice and software piracy

This paper assumes that the purpose of ethics is to open up a space for the possibility of moral conduct in the flow of everyday life. If this is the case then we can legitimately ask: ‘How then do we do ethics?’ To attempt an answer to this important question, the paper presents some suggestions from the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. With Levinas, it is argued that ethics happens in the singularity of the face of the Other before me ‘here and now’. Ethics matters in my everyday contact with the Other that disturbs my egological existence and claims my response. But what about all other Others, not here now but nevertheless simultaneously already present? What about their equal claim on me? With Levinas and Derrida, the paper attempts to articulate the notion of singular justice as the simultaneous demand of all others requiring my response. In singular justice, the paper attempts to show how the demands of ethics (the singular) and the demands of justice (all other Others) can become the impossible possibility for a ‘justice where there is no distinction between those close and those far off, but in which there also remains the impossibility of passing by the closest’. Furthermore, the paper attempts to argue that singular justice is our calling – or more precisely my calling – to do the right thing, here and now. Finally, by way of explication, the paper discusses a case of software piracy to try to show how singular justice can help us not to think about ethics, which is important, but to (almost) do it – which is very important.     

Interaction effects in software piracy

The paper presents an exploratory attempt to analyse self-reported leniency toward software piracy systematically, using an approach based on empirical factors, rather than ethical factors. The empirical factors studied were: (i) social acceptance of software piracy; (ii) the cost of original software; (iii) urgency of the subject's need for software; (iv) availability of original software; (v) knowledge of computer software copyright law; (vi) gender; (vii) monthly household income; and (viii) education level. It provides new insights to software companies and government officials who are developing programmes to promote the concept of anti-piracy among software consumers. This is also the first exploratory research to study the interaction effects among factors influencing the reported leniency towards software piracy, at the individual level.     

Global software piracy: Trends and strategic considerations

The design, manufacture, distribution, and sale of software constitutes a rapidly growing and remarkably lucrative global industry. Leaders of most software companies understand that intellectual property rights (IPR) typically are vital to competitive advantage and company success. Theft of intellectual property (IP) in the form of software piracy is brazen, extremely costly, lowers incentives to innovate, and threatens the very existence of some companies. IP theft, therefore, is a daunting challenge for managers of software firms. In this article, we make several contributions that should prove helpful to software designers, managers, responsible users, and broad stakeholders of software innovation and use—that is, almost all of us. In doing so, we provide an overview of international legal, ethical, economic, and systemic considerations, and we share an analysis of the drivers of consumer software piracy. We then discuss strategic considerations and introduce a decision-making typology, which may help legitimate companies to devise strategies and tactics to manage their software IP in the face of widespread piracy.     

The morality of software piracy: A cross-cultural analysis

Software piracy is a damaging and important moral issue, which is widely believed to be unchecked in particular areas of the globe. This cross-cultural study examines differences in morality and behavior toward software piracy in Singapore versus the United States, and reviews the cultural histories of Asia versus the United States to explore why these differences occur. The paper is based upon pilot data collected in the U.S. and Singapore, using a tradeoff analysis methodology and analysis. The data reveal some fascinating interactions between the level of ethical transgression and the rewards or consequences which they produce.William R. Swinyard is a Professor of Business Management and holder of the Fred G. Meyer Chair of Retailing at Brigham Young University. Professor Swinyard publishes widely in many top marketing journals, and his work has appeared previously in this journal. Heikki Rinne is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Brigham Young University. He has published in numerous academic journals including the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Retailing, the European Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of Retailing, etc. Ah Keng KAU is an Associate Professor with the Department of Marketing, National University of Singapore, and was previously Director of the School of Postgraduate Management Studies and Head of the Department of Marketing there. Dr. Kau has published papers in many western and international journals.     

Situational determinants of software piracy: An equity theory perspective

Software piracy has become recognized as a major problem for the software industry and for business. One research approach that has provided a theoretical framework for studying software piracy has been to place the illegal copying of software within the domain of ethical decision making assumes that a person must be able to recognize software piracy as a moral issue. A person who fails to recognize a moral issue will fail to employ moral decision making schemata. There is substantial evidence that many individuals do not perceive software piracy to be an ethical problem. This paper applies social exchange theory, in particular equity theory, to predict the influence of situational factors on subjects' intentions to participate in software piracy. Consistent with the predictions of equity theory this study found that input and outcome situational variables significantly effect a person's intentions to commit software piracy.Richard S. Glass is an Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems at Bryant College in Smithfield RI. His current research interests include the ethical use of information technology, decision making, decision support systems and expert systems.Wallace A. Wood is a Professor of Computer Information Systems at Bryant College in Smithfield RI. His current research interests include the ethical use of information technology and the effective use of information systems.     

An analysis of the predictors of software piracy within Latin America

Corruption has become an increasingly salient issue in recent years due to the increasing pressure placed on top management teams of multinational firms to maintain high moral standards in all facets of their operations. The level and scope of corruption in a particular country is worthy of consideration as companies seek potential export markets and global partners. While macro-level academic research related to causes of corruption has burgeoned in the past decade, there is a lack of depth and breadth with respect to corruption research in Latin America. The current study analyzes patterns of software piracy (a notorious type of corruption) for 20 Latin American nations. Results indicate that economic growth, foreign direct investment, Internet usage, and development assistance relate to software piracy rates in Latin America.     

Protecting intellectual property: Strategies and recommendations to deter counterfeiting and brand piracy in global markets

Many provisions articulated in the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements are intended to protect intellectual property rights (IPR). The authors contend that despite these provisions IP pi racy, especially counterfeiting, will continue to be rampant in the foreseeable future. The authors discuss the factors that will continue to make IP piracy problematic and offer proactive solutions to companies interested in protecting IPR should they not have the fullest confidence in the enforcement mechanisms provided by the WTO.     

How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?: An analysis of piracy protection on the diffusion of software

This paper examines the relationship between the rate of software diffusion and piracy. Literature suggests that tolerating some piracy can be justified since it speeds up software diffusion. The question is, how much should be tolerated? Using innovation diffusion models of software adoption by legal buyers and pirates, answers to this question are obtained for the three scenarios of monopoly, multiple generations of software and competitive markets. Results include, for example, that a monopoly should start with minimum protection of its software but well before the product has diffused half way, impose maximum protection and maintain it thereafter. The results provide important strategic guidelines for firms in the software industry for managing piracy.     

Software piracy and outsourcing in two-sided markets

This paper examines the role of software piracy in digital platforms where a platform provider makes a decision of how much software to produce in-house and how much to outsource from a third-party software provider. Using a vertical differentiation model, we theoretically investigate how piracy influences the software outsourcing decision. We find that when piracy is intermediate, the loss in in-house software profits due to piracy outweighs the loss in licensing fee profits. As a result, an increase in piracy leads to more outsourcing. However, when piracy is high, it becomes too expensive for the platform provider to subsidize the software provider, resulting in a decrease in outsourcing. Moreover, when software variety is also endogenously chosen by firms, the platform provider’s incentive to develop software variety in-house depends not only on the return from software profits but also on the return from hardware profits. Under such a situation, an increase in piracy always leads to less outsourcing and less total software variety. To provide additional insights on the outsourcing decision, we conduct empirical analyses using data from the U.S. handheld video game market between 2004 and 2012. This market is a classical two-sided market, dominated by two handheld platforms (Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable) and is known to have suffered from software piracy significantly. Our regression results show that in this market, piracy increases outsourcing but has no effect on the total software variety.

     

Online piracy in the context of routine activities and subjective norms

Why do mainstream consumers who would not typically engage in illegal behaviour routinely resort to online piracy of copyrighted software? This paper provides answers to this research query by applying routine activity theory and the theory of reasoned action. The paper’s study analyses consumers’ role as possible offenders that can have the opportunity to engage in online software piracy as part of their routine online activities. Although it is problematic to measure the exact magnitude of the negative impact on the US economy, as stated by the Government Accountability Office it is sizeable. After analysing the conceptual model using a US national consumer sample of over 700 consumers, results show the influence of proximity to motivated offenders, target suitability, and capable guardianship on consumers’ attitudes and perceived subjective norms towards online software piracy, as well as their intentions to engage in this illegal behaviour on the Internet. By integrating routine activity theory, a criminology theory with the theory of reasoned action from psychology and analysing a widespread online software piracy phenomenon, several academic and practical contributions are made.     

Inter-firm R&D networks in the global software industry: An overview of major trends and patterns

This paper presents an analysis of some major historical trends in inter-firm R&D partnering in the international software industry during the period 1970–1999. Our research demonstrates an overall growth pattern of newly made R&D partnerships and reveals the important role played by leading firms. We also examine the emergence of various R&D networks in the software industry, indicating the change from sparse and disconnected inter-firm R&D networks to dense and well-connected networks since the second half of the 1980s.     

How ethical and political identifications drive adaptive behavior in the digital piracy context

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for both legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. This study explores when and why consumers make trade-offs between illegal and legal streaming services. By drawing on protection motivation theory, we find that consumers' threat and coping appraisals increase their adaptive behavior, i.e., lower intention to consume illegal and higher intention to consume legal streaming services. We also show that the strength of consumers' inherent ethical (relativism) and political (economic liberalism) identities conditions adaptive behavior through social identity theory. We find that low relativism strengthens the adaptive behavior through threat appraisal, while economic liberalism strengthens the adaptive behavior through coping appraisal. Our robustness checks show that these results hold when the model accounts for the level of consumers' digital piracy attitudes. We used a scenario-based approach to test our hypotheses and surveyed 244 consumers who use streaming services. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that consumers' adaptive behavior envisioned through protection motivation theory can be weakened or strengthened by their ethical and political identities.     

Pricing and coordination with consideration of piracy for digital goods in supply chains

Sales of digital goods via traditional channels are affected by those on digital channels, and thus a competitive relationship often exists. In addition, due to the ease of piracy, digital goods may suffer from a fall in demand, which intensifies competition. This study considers a single supplier who sells digital goods, which may be pirated, to customers through two independent and different retail channels, such as traditional and digital ones, which may compete with each other in terms of service and price. To consider the effects of piracy on demand, a Stackelberg game is utilized to determine the optimal gain-sharing ratio and the equilibrium prices for all channel members with an aim to maximize the profit of the entire supply chain. It is found that an increase in piracy would force retailers to compete in a smaller market, and thus lead to a decrease in profits for each channel member. Therefore, a retailer who has a greater market share and is capable of managing a lower piracy rate would gain more profits by setting a higher price.     

The role of religious leaders on digital piracy attitude and intention

This study examines the role of religious leaders and individual's religiousness in affecting attitude towards digital piracy and behavior intention. The data analysis of 400 usable responses from a religious organisations provided several significant relationships. Attitude towards digital piracy and subjective norms has a negative relationship with digital piracy intention. There are also significant differences between highly religious and less religious respondents in terms of their attitude towards digital piracy, motivation to comply with their religious leaders, and intention to engage in digital piracy behavior.     

Power and control in the franchise network: an investigation of ex-franchisees and brand piracy

This research considers the issue of franchisees who exit the franchise system in order to continue operating independently. The literature regarding incentives for entering franchising is reviewed in an attempt to reveal why franchisees become dissatisfied and leave. The use of power by the franchisor and its relationship to brand piracy by franchisees is explored. Franchisors and their current and former franchisees are interviewed to uncover insights into this phenomenon. Explanations concerning the effectiveness of contractual remedies, dissatisfaction with the franchise, level of dependence and expectations in the relationship, and franchisor-franchisee goal incongruence are proposed.     

Motivators and enablers of SCOURing: A study of online piracy in the US and UK

Sharing Copyrighted or Unauthorized Replications (SCOURing) is a common activity among some 80 million online file-swappers. Unfortunately, SCOURing is also an illegal activity. A better understanding of SCOURing could help to mitigate its practice. To that end, results from an empirical study of US and UK consumers suggest SCOURing is explained by motivations (justification, believed pervasiveness by peers, believed risklessness, and experiential reasons) and ability (tech-savviness). If true, then companies' efforts to reduce SCOURing by legal action or trying to educate consumers about the victims of SCOURing may be ineffective.     

Interest alignment for joint business development: How global software houses and consulting firms work together in the enterprise systems sector

Despite the relatively long history of strategic alliances in the enterprise systems sector, studies examining the relationships between software houses and consulting firms have been rare and fragmented, particularly those related to the mechanisms that promote interest alignment for delivering a joint value proposition to the market. Through the cross‐analysis of two case studies, we identify 10 mechanisms that are regularly used for interest alignment purposes as well as counterpoints that contribute to the literature regarding the search for a consistent explanation for the longevity of hybrid organizational forms. Additionally, the study provides some insights related to the impact of innovation massification on competitiveness, partners' interdependence, and the presence of complementary contracts along with insights into the coexistence and interaction of other mechanisms that may help to explain the persistent existence of hybrid organizational forms in markets. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

International heterogeneity in the associations of new business models and broadband Internet with music revenue and piracy

Broadband Internet has fundamentally changed business models in many industries. In the music industry, for instance, old business models were challenged by illegal competitors, and broadband Internet has enabled value creation through new business models. The changes that established business models experienced in the wake of broadband Internet, however, differed vastly across national markets, and these differences are not well understood. We build a conceptual framework and study the extent to which differences in economic and cultural factors are associated with different market outcomes in the wake of the proliferation of broadband Internet. Thus, we compile two unique data sets from the music industry, comprising (1) revenue data for 36 countries and 22 years and (2) piracy data for 47 countries and >2 years. We use a Bayesian multilevel model to explore between-country heterogeneity in the associations between these variables and broadband Internet adoption and business model innovations. Our results show that the negative association between broadband Internet penetration and music revenue is weaker in high-income countries, where income restrictions are less likely to drive demand towards illegitimate piracy services. In terms of cultural factors, we find that a market's response to the introduction of broadband Internet is less negative in countries scoring high on Hofstede's individualism and uncertainty avoidance dimensions. Furthermore, we find that overall revenues only recover after the latest generation of streaming services (e.g., Spotify) has been introduced, and the adoption of these services is associated with lower levels of online music piracy.     

The internationalization process of Brazilian software firms and the born global phenomenon: Examining firm,network, and entrepreneur variables

This paper examines the born-global phenomenon in the context of an emerging country, Brazil. A literature review was conducted in order to develop an integrative model of the phenomenon under study. Three sets of internal variables were identified in the literature which seemed to explain why a firm would follow a born global, rather than a traditional, internationalization process: firm, network, and entrepreneur variables. The final conceptual model was tested in a Brazilian sample of 79 software firms, of which 35 followed the born-global process of internationalization and 44 followed the traditional process. Logistic regression was used to test the research hypotheses. Results showed that certain firm and entrepreneur variables seemed to be associated to the type of internationalization process chosen by these firms. Network variables did not significantly differentiate the two groups.