This document summarizes a research paper about the effects of online piracy on the economy and society. It begins by providing background on how online piracy started and increased with advances in digital technology. It discusses how the file sharing program Napster significantly impacted the music industry when it launched in 1999. The researchers then conducted a survey of 50 people to understand online piracy behaviors and attitudes. The survey found that most people pirate music, movies, and software to save money, even though they acknowledge the negative economic effects. Common reasons for piracy included getting content for free. The researchers conclude that online piracy is an issue that requires more attention and policy solutions to address its costs.

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De La Salle University
Taft Avenue, Manila
A Comprehensive and Informative Research about the Possible Effects of How Online
Piracy Can Impact the Economy and Society
Jeremiah Lagran Allan Rey Villaverde
Joshua Tan
From the vast collection of pirated movies, softwares and games to the illegal
copyright of different music online are some examples of what a user can do to attempt
online piracy. This alarming issue had been a serious problem ever since in most
countries around the world because it is still persistent and rampant up to the present
time. To begin with the initial research, certain articles that came from newspapers and
books were used to help support evidence on a brief background and history about how
online piracy started.
In accordance with Carlsson and Gustavsson; two credible authors of the book
entitled “The rise and Fall of Napster”, “Piracy, while having always been an issue, has
garnered even more attention and anxiety with the advent of the digital age”. They both
agreed that through the advancement of the digital media, piracy would come stronger
and harder to deal with as time passed. They also believed that in order to pirate

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different merchandise, it would require a high level of technical expertise in the digital
world. An example of a website that greatly affected the music industry was Napster,
the first independent file sharing program. According to Scholes, (2014), Napster, an
independent peer-to-peer file sharing service that was founded and developed by Sean
Parker, Shawn Fanning and John Fanning caused serious damage in the music
industry. It caused the music revenue to drop massively until it was finally shut down in
the year of 2001. Today various file sharing services exist that are similar to Napster but
are able to share larger files. Previously, piracy has not been noticed meaning it look
less of a threat yet in reality when media and technology began to improve and was
enhanced, piracy gained much more attention in the event that different developers and
distributors of the media seek to prevent and combat online piracy.
Both Carlsson and Gustavsson mentioned that Napster was introduced as the
first major file sharing program and possibly was the first program to shut down before it
was succeeded by other different file sharing programs that are still present today. It
was operated from 1991 to 2001 and it immediately became popular due to its interface
and ease of use. The file program never crashed and it garnered at least 25 million
users accompanied with over 80 million songs in an instance and this looked like a
competitor for different distributors of the media. According to WEBROOT, (n.d.), piracy
or copying software or digital content is no different from stealing. In fact, it is exactly
just like stealing because piracy or pirating means getting, downloading or copying files
without the permission or approval of the owner of the file that you downloaded from
since people who do not have approval or permission from the owners of the file or
software are called digital pirates. Copying an illegal file from a friend or a family

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member, getting illegal files from networks or sharing servers and buying and selling of
illegal copies to other people are considered as an act of a digital pirate. Again, Napster
was very popular among its users as there were various artists who filed against it due
to copyright material but it was eventually shut down because of a separate lawsuit,
specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
According to Masnick, (2012), there are currently various laws that are against
piracy which states that people must not steal or copy purchased contents or files.
Although Napster was completely shut down, there are still different file sharing
programs which provides a copyright infringement like LimeWire, BitTorrent and the like.
However, piracy is supported by the Swedish Law leading to controversies and the filing
of different complaints against their support to piracy. Moreover, there are also a variety
of organizations and lawsuits that contradict to online piracy that they would do
everything in order to bring down a certain site or file sharing program. They also
enforce different laws to support their arguments. In addition, there are different laws
and acts not in favor of online piracy and different committees launched definite
hearings on the current issue. On different reports, video consumption could be seen
with an increase of nearing 200% on a span of years and some did not contain
legitimate content. Additionally, the report was unveiled and shared on a capitol event
emphasizing that copyright infringement will be “tenacious and persistent” (Reid, R.
2012) and all efforts must be in lieu with the issue itself.
Afterwards, the researchers initially brainstormed on social issues that gain a lot
of attention until they came up with the topic of how online piracy affects the society and
economy. Eventually, survey questions were created in order to find the answers on

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why the respondents download pirated software and how frequent they download it. The
researchers conducted a survey to exactly 50 respondents coming from different
schools and various age groups specifically 16 years old and below, 17 to 20 years old
and 21 years old and above so that the researchers will be able to know which age
group downloads pirated music, movies and software more frequently. The survey
contained questions like how much the respondents download pirated music and
movies in a month and how many pirated software they download in a year. The survey
included nine questions wherein four questions were answerable by “Yes” or “No” while
the remaining questions were multiple types of questions so that the researchers will be
able to get more specific answers. The use of this scaling method enables automated
data entry, fast and easier method for data answering by the respondents, and it
gauges the different opinions of the respondents regarding online piracy. The data
derived was compiled and results were generated. In conclusion, the data gathering
was administered to exactly 50 respondents who download various pirated software.
The survey was used to obtain data from individuals regarding their opinions about
online piracy and their reasons behind downloading pirated programs.
TABLE 1:
Age ranges of the respondents
Table 1 presents the respondents on which age group they currently belong to,
specifically 16 or younger, 17 to 20 years old or 21 and older.

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TABLE 2:
Table 2 displays the survey’s respondents amounting to a total of 50 people who
downloads pirated music, movies and software in the internet. 100% of the respondents
answered “Yes” on questions number one and two which reveals that the primary or
main reason why the respondents download pirated music, movies or software is to cut
costs. Moreover, more than 80% of the respondents answered “Yes” in questions
number three and four which shows that most of them are aware of the repercussions
piracy has on our economy and even though they still prefer the original copies over the
pirated copies if both of them are also for free but they prefer downloading pirated
copies if the original copies have a price.
TABLE 3:
The Average Number of Songs Downloaded per Month
Table 3 shows that majority of the respondents download at about 6-15 songs per
month which equates to 40% of the respondents.

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TABLE 4:
The Average Number of Movies Downloaded per Month
Table 4 displayed that majority of the respondents which is equal to 46% of the
overall respondents download 4-6 movies per month. This is a big concern and is
alarming because a single person who downloads 6-15 songs and 4-6 movies per
month may not amount to much but when a group of people downloads this many
regularly, it will have a huge impact on the revenues of the industry that is directly
affected.
TABLE 5:
The Average Number of Programs Downloaded per Year
Table 5 shows how often users download pirated software in the internet. As it
can be seen, 1 to 3 software programs are mostly preferred by users to download for at
mostly a year. Although this may be less compared to other results, this implies that
majority of the users would favor to gain software the fastest and easiest way.

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TABLE 6:
The Most Common Reasons for Downloading Pirated Programs
Table 6 illustrates the results on what could be the major reasons of why a lot of
users commit online piracy. In the great majority of cases, the most common reason
why users do it is to be able to acquire their desired software for free and without pay.
This may be alarming since most people would want something for free as it
immediately catches their attention because one would get something without spending
money with ease so this could explain why most users continue to pirate goods. While it
may be possible to lessen the said activity, piracy may still be persistent throughout the
process as it may still continue to flourish in different countries and there are still various
file sharing programs that exist to provide pirate users their desired goods.
Ultimately, there are still numerous laws against piracy, hence this may or may
not be effective in stopping or preventing further pirating of copyrighted software.
Furthermore, According to WEBROOT, (n.d.), contrary to what people believe, piracy is
not a victimless act. Piracy affects people who are working in industries like music,
software, movies and many other industries. When a person illegally downloads any
software from the internet or even just copy an illegally downloaded file from a friend it

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will still have huge repercussions to the industry that made the original ones. It means
that the industries will lose a large sum of money. Plenty of people who work in
industries that are directly affected by piracy will lose their work, because of the stolen
profits caused by piracy. Furthermore, this research intends to show that online piracy is
an issue that needs much attention and should be addressed quickly. With this in mind,
this paper aims to provide awareness and a background about how extensive online
piracy is in other countries compared to the Philippines by presenting laws, accurate
statistics and how it could affect our economy and society.
References:
WEBROOT, (n.d) The Societal Costs of Digital Piracy. Retrieved July 23, 2014 from:
www.webroot/us/en/home/resources/tips/ethics-and-legal/the-societal-costs-of-
digital-piracy
Scholes, W. (2014 Piracy’s Ripple Effects on the Global Economy. Retrieved July 23,
2014 from:
www.diplomaticcourier/news/sponsored/2011-piracy-ripple-effect-on-the-global-eco
nomy
Masnick, M. (2012) How much Is Enough? We’ve Passed 15 ‘Anti-Piracy’ Laws In the
Last 30 years, Retrieved July 23, 2014 from:
www.techdirt.com/articles/20120215/04241517766/how-much-is-enough-weve-pas
sed-15-anti-piracy-laws-last-30-years

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Johnson, T. (2013) NBCU- Backed Study: Online Piracy Continues to Rise
Dramatically. Variety. Retrieved July 23,2014 from
variety.com/2013/digital/news/piracy-continues-to-rise-dramatically-study-from-
nbcu-concludes
Carlsson, B., & Gustavsson, R. (2001). The rise and fall of Napster - an evolutionary
approach. US: Department of Software Engineering and Computer
Science/Blekinge Institute of Technology. Retrieved July 23, 2014 from
http://piracy.web.unc.edu/brief-history-of-online-piracy/
Reid, R. (2012). What To Do When Attacked By Pirates, 2. Retrieved July 23, 2014 from
online.wsj.com/news/articles/

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Appendix A:
Dear _________,
We are students of De La Salle University - Manila currently taking up the
subject, English Research. We kindly ask you to honestly answer some questions
regarding our topic, Online Piracy. Your answers to our questions are very crucial for
our paper and will be deeply appreciated.
We strongly guarantee you that your answers to this questionnaire will be
handled in strictest confidence. If you happen to have any questions or inquiries about
our survey, we will be pleased to entertain and discuss it with you.
Sincerely,
Joshua Tan
Jeremiah Lagran

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Survey Questions:
1. Do you download pirated music, movies and software from the internet?
2. Do you download pirated music, movies and software to cut costs?
3. Do you know that downloading pirated music, movies and software has repercussions
on our economy?
4. Would you prefer to download original software over a pirated one if it is also free?
5. On average, how often do you download pirated music?
6. On average, how often do you download pirated movies?
7. On average, how often do you download pirated software?
8. What do you think is/are the major reason(s) for piracy?

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