Motivators and enablers of SCOURing: A study of online piracy in the US and UK

Sharing Copyrighted or Unauthorized Replications (SCOURing) is a common activity among some 80 million online file-swappers. Unfortunately, SCOURing is also an illegal activity. A better understanding of SCOURing could help to mitigate its practice. To that end, results from an empirical study of US and UK consumers suggest SCOURing is explained by motivations (justification, believed pervasiveness by peers, believed risklessness, and experiential reasons) and ability (tech-savviness). If true, then companies' efforts to reduce SCOURing by legal action or trying to educate consumers about the victims of SCOURing may be ineffective.