Software piracy among IT professionals in organizations

Abstract

This paper reviews and discusses software piracy issues from a global perspective. It also reports the findings of a survey concerning the impact of demographic factors on software piracy among IT professionals in Turkey. Although the impact of these factors on software piracy has long been attracting the interest of academics, no quantitative research has ever been realized in this field in the country. Elsewhere also, most of the software piracy-related studies are limited to students and academics and very few have reported findings related to IT professionals in different organizations. The survey was conducted among IT professionals from government and private sector organizations. Based on this survey, the results indicated that gender, age and experience have significant impact on software piracy. The implications of these findings are discussed and compared with other related studies. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.