![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Despite highly publicized efforts by the music industry to curb music piracy, millions of Americans continued to illegally download and share music. This study obtained college student responses to scenarios that measured perceptions of three types of music theft: shoplifting a CD, illegally downloading, and illegally downloading plus file sharing. The students also reported their own recent downloading behavior, completed a demographics questionnaire, and responded to a series of statements that assessed their attitudes regarding factors associated with legal compliance in other domains. The data indicated that students viewed downloading and file sharing very differently than they viewed shoplifting in terms of endorsement of reasons to comply with laws prohibiting those behaviors. Further, concerns regarding punishment (i.e. deterrence), morality beliefs, and generalized obligation to obey the rule of law had the strongest relationships to self-reported downloading behavior. Respect for the music industry had the weakest relationship to legal compliance with both responses to the scenarios and students’ self-report of their own downloading behavior.
Notes
1. The title of this paper is an allusion to Tom Tyler's (Citation2006) influential book, Why people obey the law, which was originally published in 1990.
2. ‘Downloading’ refers to illegally downloading copyrighted music. ‘Sharing’ refers to illegally downloading copyrighted music onto a computer, and making the files available to others.
3. We measured two components of perceived legitimacy of authority (support for legal authority and obligation to obey the law) separately. We measured procedural justice, but considered the psychometric properties of that scale inadequate. Therefore, we do not report on procedural justice in this paper.