Specification of project

Andrei C APASTRU

April 19, 2017

Project Title
Digital Piracy Era: A Need for an Innovative Approach

Project Members
Authors: Andrei Capastru
Supervisor: Jenny Lagsten

Description of the problem

Digital piracy is the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. This can mean anything
from illegally downloading a song, movie, e-book, or software. If you share a song, movie,
e-book, or software, you are also considered a digital pirate (Digital Piracy, 2016).
The problem is the Digital Piracy increases every year by a huge percentage, despite the
efforts of the creators to diminish its volume. (Steele, 2016)

Overall aim
The aim of this study is to find the reasons why piracy is still increasing and also get
insights why some companies succeed to combat it and others do not. One goal is to identify
the approaches that work and flaws in the anti-piracy established systems at software and
organizational level.

Specified objectives
to determine the need of pirating (survey pirates);
to identify companies measures against piracy;
to asses the effectiveness of the measures;
to establish the best measures against digital piracy.

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Stakeholders and their roles
digital content producers subjects of the research, provide information about their
measures and tactics against piracy, interested in the result of the research;

digital content consumers (pirates) subjects of the research, provide information

(through a survey) about how and why they pirate, interested in the results;

author responsible for accomplishing the research.

Requirements
This research requires a gathering, analysis of the existing research and online pub-
lished data about digital piracy. It will involve scientific and journalistic articles about digital
piracy trends and diminishing approaches.

Descriptions of the starting point

The point where this research begins is the literature review of below mentioned articles
and also a survey carried out by Berkay Cit, a turkish student. (link)

Constraints / delimitations
This research is limited in time and framed by the availability of the companies and
users that will participate in the survey, and will depend by their numbers.
The objectives were reduced to a number of four in order to carry a meaningful answer
to the research question and a respectable fulfillment of the general aim.

Proposed approach
The research will employ both quantitative and qualitative research in order to convey
the answers to the questions. I will try to quantify the Likert/multiple choice answers to the
survey and also to qualitatively analyze the open questions.
The paper will be presented in form of a literature review and secondary research, the
review being conducted following the guidelines by Webster and Watson (2002). Data col-
lection is performed according to Doolan and Froelicher (2009) suggestions about how to
use an existing data set to answer the research questions. The provisional list of sources:

If you think piracy is decreasing, you havent looked at the data...(Steele, 2016)

Spotify Kills Piracy AND Paid Downloads, European Study Finds

Statistics source 2010 PIRACY STUDY, May 2011

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 Digital Piracy Stronger than Ever

The Societal Costs of Digital Piracy (Danaher & Waldfogel, n.d.)

The Societal Costs of Digital Piracy

Security firm warns of malware risks in pirated software

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies(Brown,

2014)

Music industry claims 95% of downloads illegal as CD sales fall

Netflix steps up piracy fight by sending take-down notices to Google

Internet piracy falls to record lows amid rise of Spotify and Netflix

Spotify Kills Piracy AND Paid Downloads, European Study Finds

Major activities planned

1. Define the research means (question and objectives).

2. Make a specification with a time schedule.

3. Survey consumers of digital content that are pirating software.

4. Gather information about digital piracy diminishing approaches (scientific articles,

companies reports, journalistic articles, etc.).

5. Define a conceptual framework for the research question.

6. Analyze the gathered information and survey results according to specified methods.

7. Aggregate everything into a research paper.

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Time schedule

Specification
April 7
Start Finish gathering phase Submission
April 1 April 15 April 30 May 26

Day 1 4 7 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Gathering 29 days
Define research means 9 days
Time schedule definition 3 day
Survey consumers 23 days ...
Literature resources gathering 25 days ...

Phase 2 25
Define conceptual framework 10 days
Analyze the gathered information 17 days 2 days
Aggregate everything into a research paper 10 days

Risks
Risks list:
not enough survey results in time;
concept of value stays undefined;
inapplicable conceptual framework to the researched material;
no pattern identified among anti-piracy approaches;
An thorough analysis of risks will be made further and the needed mitigation meth-
ods will be applied for each risk, depending on where it lays on the risk matrix (intrinsic,
extrinsic | high impact, low impact).

References
Brown, S. C. (2014). Approaches to digital piracy research. Convergence, 20(2), 129-
139. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354856513517470 doi:
10.1177/1354856513517470
Danaher, B., & Waldfogel, J. (n.d.). Reel piracy: The effect of online film piracy on interna-
tional box office sales. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1986299
Steele, R. (2016, Feb). If you think piracy is decreasing, you havent looked at the data...
Retrieved from http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/07/16/if-you
-think-piracy-is-decreasing-you-havent-looked-at-the-data-2/