Media Piracy: An Ethical Analysis of Media Downloading — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Media Piracy: An Ethical Analysis of Media Downloading

Name: Allison Von Borstel
Major: Economics and International Political Economy
Hometown: Orland Park, IL
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

This paper on media piracy analyzes how legal decision making due to punishment moderates the strength of the mediated relationships between locus of control (Hypothesis 1a), cognitive moral development (Hypothesis 1b), and price discrimination (Hypothesis 1c) with decision value via psychological rewards such that the mediated relationships are stronger for those with higher punishments than for those with lower punishment.

The media industry has seen a detrimental decrease in potential profits due to piracy - this multi-billion dollar industry has fallen victim to the fluidity and anonymity of the Internet. Previous research on illegal downloading has focused on attitude and choice as well as the possibility of deterrence. However, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding legal effects. This new information, coupled with historic trends in piracy data, reveals novel ideas and strategies for information technology and the media industry.

A survey is created to analyze these hypotheses, scales are adapted or adopted for each construct, and vignettes are used to further understand the moderated findings. To ensure the validity of the results, both latent constructs are developed to isolate the ethical and legal factors studied. Multivariate outliers are handled with particular care. To determine the correlation among variables and model fit, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are conducted. Pattern matrixes are utilized to build the model which visualizes the proposed hypotheses.

The data suggests findings of value to both future academic research as well as practitioners attempting to improve current, legal means of obtaining media.