The Impact of Technical Copy Protection and Internet Services Usage on Software Piracy - An International Survey on Sequencer Software Piracy -

Software piracy has recently gained enormous attention, not only in the context of P2P-networks. As one countermeasure against software piracy, publishers have been implementing Digital Rights Management systems such as technical copy protection measures into their software products. This paper examines the impact of different technical copy protection measures and Internet services usage on software piracy using data from an internationally organized online survey. The results show that technical protection measures fail to achieve their protection goals, as none of the studied protection measures completely avoids piracy. A higher level of copy protection does not always make a legal software installation more likely. In contrast, a low level of protection does not necessarily lead to intense illegal copying. P2Pand Chat-networks compromise the security of technical copy protections as they provide access to cracked software copies, fostering software piracy. Based on our results, we discuss the impact of our findings on the publishers' anti-piracy strategy from an economic point of view and present possible security improvements for hardwareand software-based copy protections.