Software Piracy Research: A Cross Disciplinary Longitudinal Literature Survey

Abstract

Few studies have synthesized accumulated scholarly knowledge on software piracy across the disciplines that study this phenomenon. We contribute to understanding the intellectual and social development on software piracy by performing a cross-disciplinary literature search. We used 17 research questions to address five specific areas of inquiry on software piracy research: 1) what makes up software piracy's intellectual substance?, 2) do theoretical contributions on software piracy suggest a cross-disciplinary research community on the topic?, 3) what changes have occurred in software piracy research across the seven measured periods?, 4) what are the top IS journals' publishing patterns on software piracy research?, and 5) who has contributed to software piracy research? To address these questions, we classified 179 software research studies. We found that: 1) over 50 percent of the studies focused on an individual level of analysis, 2) most papers examined software piracy in North America and Asia Pacific regions, although other regions also have major problems, and 3) the distribution of theoretical and methodological contributions show a pattern of leaning towards positivism. The findings point to several research opportunities including expanding research: 1) at organizational levels with particular emphasis on organizations' role as consumers and or intermediaries, 2) in Latin America and Africa, which are areas with high incidence of software piracy, and 3) on approaches beyond positivism.We present a detailed theoretical approach to our review below. First, however, we demonstrate precisely what ethical and legal problems "piracy" refers to in the context of software and business.

Insight into ethical cyber behaviour of undergraduate students at selected African universities

“…Following this is cyber smearing with m = 3.6, SD = 1.4 for Nigeria and m = 3.7, SD = 1.3 for South Africa and cybersex behaviour, with m = 3.5, SD = 1.4 for Nigeria, and m = 3.2, SD = 1.5 for South Africa. These findings are corroborated in several studies that have underscored the prevalence of cyber piracy and other forms of cyber violations amongst undergraduate students (Chavarria et al 2016;Cilliers 2017). The use of cyber technology, especially computers, smart devices and the Internet, has become part of the daily routine at most university campuses.…”

The IS History Initiative: Continued Efforts and Results

“…2.3.7 Paper Preview: Software Piracy Research: A Cross-disciplinary Systematic Review (Chavarria, Andoh-Baidoo, Midha, & Hughes, 2016) Similar to many areas in the IS field, software piracy research is interdisciplinary, problem driven, and multi-faceted. The wide-ranged research by scholars in many fields has yielded a literature that is not integrated and not easy to make sense of.…”

The IS History Initiative: Continued Efforts and Results

“…The wide-ranged research by scholars in many fields has yielded a literature that is not integrated and not easy to make sense of. Chavarria et al (2016) systematically review the published papers to address a set of questions on the intellectual and social elements of this research area.…”