Towards a conceptual model of software piracy: from students perspective

Today, software piracy is an issue of global importance to businesses and software developers. Software piracy has been a major problem and costs billions of dollars worldwide annually. Ever since the invention of the internet, and the increasing speed at which information has been shared, people have found ways to illegally share information in a variety of ways. Computer information systems (CIS), management information system (MIS) or computer science (CS) students are the future information and communication technologies professionals and it is important to study the way they approach this issue. In this article, an attempt is made to introduce a software piracy model and test it in order to resolve this issue more successfully. This study presents an exploratory investigation designed to identify some factors leading to software piracy intention. 190 students from nine different courses at two various universities took part in this investigation. The study supports that the main motive of software piracy is the high cost of the software. The study suggested a number of hypotheses and they were tested using a series of t-test. The author hopes that this paper provides valuable insights into the notation of educational design as an important part of an academic's routine activities.