Student Digital Piracy in the Florida State University System:An Exploratory Study on Its Infrastructural Effects
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University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2010 Student Digital Piracy In The Florida State University System:an Exploratory Study On Its Infrastructural Effects Jeffrey Reiss University of Central Florida Part of the Educational Leadership Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Reiss, Jeffrey, "Student Digital Piracy In The Florida State University System:an Exploratory Study On Its Infrastructural Effects" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 4196. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4196 STUDENT DIGITAL PIRACY IN THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON ITS INFRASTRUCTURAL EFFECTS by JEFFREY REISS B.S. University of Central Florida, 2003 M.S. University of Central Florida, 2005 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Department of Educational Research, Technology, and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2010 Major Professor: Rosa Cintrón © 2010 Jeffrey Reiss ii ABSTRACT Digital piracy is a problem that may never disappear from society. Through readily available resources such as those found in a university, students will always have access to illegal goods. While piracy is a global phenomenon, an institution’s resources combined with the typical college student’s lack of funds makes it more lucrative. Students use a number of methods to justify their actions ranging from previewing media to bringing justice to a corrupt company. While trying to understand the mindset of pirates is one route to deal with piracy, corporations attempted to alleviate the situation using added software encoding. These messages are not always effective, and in some cases caused further damage to consumer morale. Furthermore, students such as Joel Tenenbaum, who continued to pirate music despite warnings from his parents and the recording industry, exemplify the type of person that is unfazed by legal threats, leading to a question of ethics. Students may not feel that downloading is stealing despite numerous warnings from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other major media organizations. The predominant solution used by universities involves monitoring the students’ network connection to detect Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connections or other connections that involve the transferring of copyrighted goods. Unfortunately, the current tools contain flaws that a crafty student may easily circumvent, undermining any attempts a university’s IT department may use to deter piracy. iii This study explored the nature of piracy prevention tools used by IT departments in the Florida State University System in order to determine their relative effectiveness. The study also looked into the opinions of the Information Security Officer in terms of alternative piracy prevention techniques that do not involve legal action and monitoring. It was found that most institutions do not use a formal piece of software that monitors for infringing data. They also stated that while their current techniques can do its required task, it was not perfected to a point where it could run autonomously. Furthermore, institutions agreed that students lack proper ethics and concern over the matter of copyright, but were not fully convinced that other preventions methods would be effective. The study ultimately considered monitoring techniques a short-term solution and that more research should be put into finding long-term solutions. It also implied that IT departments should be better funded in order to keep up with the technological gap. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my dissertation committee chair and advisor, Dr. Rosa Cintrón. Your passion for this program ensured that I reached my fullest potential in writing this dissertation. I greatly appreciate all of your dedication and guidance through the process. Thanks also go out to my committee members Dr. Tammy Boyd, Dr. Margaret Miller, and Dr. George Pawlas. Your suggestions and comments during the defense process helped immensely. I also value your collective interest in a topic that was a bit outside of the “norm” for this program. I would also like to thank my friends and extended family for their consistent moral support and understanding of the level of commitment required for this process. Your thoughts and well wishes were always much appreciated. To my sister, Dr. Elayne Reiss, commonly known as my “younger, female clone,” I thank you for putting up with me over all these years of academia. The program would not have been nearly as interesting or fun without you. I am proud that we have now had the unique opportunity as brother and sister to graduate from the same program with the same degrees at the same time on three separate occasions. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their support, encouragement, and patience. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. x LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM AND RESEARCH DESIGN ................................................... 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Problem Statement ................................................................................................ 3 Purpose of Study .................................................................................................... 5 Significance of the Study ....................................................................................... 6 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 8 Definition of Terms ............................................................................................... 8 Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................... 11 Delimitations of the Study .................................................................................. 13 Organization of the Study ................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 15 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 15 The History of Copyrights and Copyright Infringement .................................. 15 Foreign Copyrights and the United States.............................................. 17 The Fair Use Clause ................................................................................. 19 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) .......................................... 21 Software Piracy .................................................................................................... 21 vi Physical Media versus Digital Media ...................................................... 24 Copyright Infringement and File Sharing .......................................................... 27 Profiling Student Software Pirates ...................................................................... 33 Demographic Profiling ............................................................................ 34 Identifying Ethics, and Motives .............................................................. 38 Matching to Psychological Models ......................................................... 42 Criminology and Self-Control ................................................................. 49 Qualitative Studies ................................................................................... 52 Digital Rights Management: A Problematic Solution ...................................... 55 The Influence of the Recording Industry ........................................................... 59 Finding Profit Despite Piracy .................................................................. 64 Policies of the Higher Education Act ................................................................. 72 Creative Commons ................................................................................... 75 Software Deterrents to Piracy ............................................................................. 77 Software Deterrents as Ethical Beings .................................................... 81 Classical Ethics ..................................................................................................... 83 Ethical Relativism .................................................................................... 83 Utilitarianism ........................................................................................... 85 Deontological Theories ............................................................................ 87 Virtue Ethics ............................................................................................ 92 vii Ethics and Computers .........................................................................................