Our world, which has been under humans constant pressure to escalate the boundaries of possibilities, is reaching to its

paramount advancement in various fields. Much great things can be seen around us as we live throughout the years. The transportations are getting more and more fuel-efficient and emitting less harmful gases; buildings that can accommodate thousands of people at a time; and most importantly, the vast improvement of the digital goods. Scores of companies have developed various digital goods to keep pace with the demands of millions of people, each with their unique wants and needs. These companies are trying their best to improve or create new products in each of their working day. Nevertheless, we as their patrons of their benefits are becoming more prone with carelessness with the apparent problems that these companies are facing. For those who are still listening to the huff and puff of your own negligence, here is the rub: we are facing mass digital piracy. Every day the increasing rate of digital piracy is making the companies being in a state of constant alarm. Not only that, this problematic occurrence also affects us as the users. As digital piracy affects us globally, it is necessary for us to know the roots, the consequences of committing it and the appropriate responses to overcome this problem. One of the causes of digital piracy is based on the equity theory. Equity theory is an important theory of social exchange and justice (Adams, 1963; Glass & Wood, 1996; Joshi, 1990; Kabanoff, 1991). The equity theory describes an individuals pursuit for objectivity or fairness in social exchanges. The prices for digital goods as seen by the pirates are high, and given the economic success of some of the copyright holders, they see this to be discriminatory. The pirates use this discrepancy to vindicate their unlawful activities. In the software industry, entities like the Free Software, not only as an advocate giving away software for free, but they also take part in a bigger role, like emphasizing the impression that the entities that put high prices on software to be undeserved for the gains they acquire, as per se. Again, context is important. In the music industry, consumers who are frustrated with CDs that includes one or two good tracks with other ordinary selections, and they are charged with high price for the album, may have fired up the feelings of inequity and been used to help vindicate music piracy over the Internet. The pirates have the ability to select the good tracks that the consumers really want and share the online.

Another prominent cause of piracy is moral intensity. According to Jones (1991) that had argued upon the impact of moral intensity on individuals to engage in unethical actions said that moral intensity is a multi-dimensional construct determined by six characteristics which are: the magnitude of consequences, social consensus, the probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. Briefly, magnitude of consequences refers to the harm done to sufferers of the moral act. Social consensus refers to the social agreement that an act is immoral. The probability of effect refers to the probability that an act will cause damage. Temporal immediacy is the length of time between the present and the onset of harmful values. Proximity is the feeling of nearness that an individual has to those injured by an unethical act. Concentration of effect is an inverse function of the number of people impacted by an act of a given magnitude. Each of these conditions is correlated with greater moral intensity, producing higher rate of moral behaviour. It depends contextually to some extent that the tendency of an individual to behave in a moral fashion. Based on this, one can assume that there is a high level of piracy as the moral intensity is rather low.

Let us have a look at the consequences of doing digital piracy. A distinct consequence of digital piracy is its effects on the movie industries. Piracy affects negatively on the rate at which revenues of movie industries declined. Pirate sites that precede the opening of a movie during the week affect the first weeks revenue. A pirated film may subject to a nosedive to meet the holdover amount that is vital to extend the run for another week. Other exhibitors will try not to put a pirated film for display because of its low earnings. This will result in the fall of the peoples expectancy of upcoming movies in the cinemas. In the course if these mechanisms, piracy would accelerate the rate of which a movies theatrical gross revenues decline and increase in the rate at which it loses theatres through the week of its run.

If piracy is viewed from a dynamic perspective, organizations can also benefit from it. There are a number of ways of which piracy can affect the growth of demand of digital goods (Conner & Rumelt, 1991; Haruvy, Mahajan, & Prasad, 2004). Piracy can be perceived as a strategy for product sampling. Consumers are able to evaluate the pirated goods in the

absence of legal samples and they may decide whether to buy the authentic product or not based on their satisfaction. Piracy can also help to lock in a copyright holders product as an industry standard when the value of that product is contingent upon the supply of complementary products. Computer operating systems, for example, must work with software applications or programmes and other peripheral hardware products, such as printers, scanners, and modems. In this case, the greater the installed base of the operating system, the greater the supply of complementary products that work with that operating system and thus the greater the value of owning the operating system, which translates into higher demand for that operating system. This sort of feedback mechanism can rapidly lock a market into a dominant technological solution (Arthur, 1989; Shapiro & Varian, 1999). A good retaliating response to digital piracy is by offering something additional to consumers who purchase the legal product. Software companies should offer something that can only be obtained by purchasing the legitimate product. For an instance, computer software has to offer online services, such as time to time upgrades and security patches, to consumers who register the legal good with security measure that is unique to every legal copy of the product. Those who purchase illegal copies do not have access to a security code, they cannot get these benefits. The perception of inequity will be decreased as this strategy excellently increases the value of the legal product. Buyers will realise that the legal good will be more beneficial than the pirated good.

Another good step to overcome digital piracy is to close the perceived gap of equity. Lowering the price of legal good might be the most apparent way to close the alleged equity gap. This can limit the attraction of the pirated good towards the consumers. They should lower the price so that the buyers will not divert to pirated products. Copyright holders should also try lower the price for the short run period to avoid pirated products monopoly the market. People nowadays are very much concerned of the flow of their money into things that they want to buy. When they see that these companies have lowered the price of their goods, people will be enticed to the legal product given that price is not too high and within their income level.

A lot of us may succumb to neglect the appointed notions but we should know that what we do now is the one determining what will happen to us next. Having the slightest concern on this particular detail on digital piracy is one step closer to overcome this matter. Hence, it is essential for us to know about the digital piracy factor that is based on the equity theory, the effects on movie industries as a result of performing the digital piracy as well as the strategic response to the problem which is offering additional benefits for those consuming the original and legal products as well as lowering the prices.

References

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