Software Piracy: Factors and Profiling

Nowadays, students from different levels are getting involved in software piracy, and piracy becomes a threat to all content makers. It is important to know the most important underlying reason for such activities of students, and it would be interesting to see the source of their motivation for doing piracy and also finding out the students profile who usually refrain from piracy. A survey is conducted for this research among the students of different departments of East West University, and quantitative research strategy is chosen. This research finds out that awareness is the most influential factor among ethical standard, financial status and payment method for involving into piracy. It also finds out that first- or second-year's students, students of English and Economics, students who have a family income above seventy thousand and most female students usually refrain from using pirated software. This research also finds out that computer labs of the educational institutions are the most popular factor that motivates students to do piracy. The antipiracy campaign could be organized as the practical consequences of this study. Piracy activist and other institution can use this data to get knowledge about the perception of students towards piracy.