The next article I will be reviewing is, “Netflix as a Piracy Disruptor? A Cross-sectional Test of Accessibility and Affordability on Interest in Piracy,” by David Makin and Oliver Bowers. This article relates to social science because it looks at how people download movies legally and illegally. “The introduction of Netflix to a country has a disrupting influence on interest in piracy,” (Makin, Bowers). Pirating media has been costing the global economy millions. The study’s research questions stem from “we examine the relationships between legal and illicit sources of digital media and how economic factors affect their usage on a global scale,” (Makin, Bowers). They had two hypotheses and they are, “The expansion of Netflix within a nation is associated with decreases in interest associated with the website pirate bay,” (Makin, Bowers). Hypothesis 2, “Increases in the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is associated with decreases in interest in websites associated with piracy and technology necessary to engage in piracy,”(Bowers, Makin). The authors used case studies to look at the relationship between legal ad illegal sources of media and the economic factors. They are looking to see if Netflix makes a big difference when it comes to pirating movies. The types of data and analysis were big on affordability. “Given the notoriety of the Pirate Bay, using this feature allows for a more robust measure, increasing confidence that our interest measures are associated with the specific websites and not queries entered for news information about the website,” (Makin, Bowers). They used an economic Purchasing Power Party to compare standardized the value of an international dollar. “According to the researchers, displacement (disruption) is best understood and should be measured on a scale from zero to one, wherein zero is no displacement and one is a lost sale. According to Bernat and Makin (2014), such behavior should not be considered an act of displacement,” (Bowers, Makin). In their results they could tell that the launch of Netflix caused piracy to decrease as said, “for most countries being examined, the introduction of Netflix led to a decline in interest in piracy, although as discussed earlier other factors could be instrumental in disrupting interest in piracy. The decline in interest in piracy, after the introduction of a legal alternative, reinforces the concept that content availability is a motivating factor towards piracy, and when legal alternatives are available the interest in piracy is lessened. The data seems to suggest that for countries with significantly increasing interest in piracy, the introduction of a legal alternative (Netflix) is likely to yield a decrease in interest in piracy,” ( Makin, Bowers). “ The launch of Netflix in some countries coincides with a noticeable change in interest in these sites,”(Makin, Bowers). Not only did they look at the United States they also looked at Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, and Spain. Piracy decreased in all these countries. This article relates to the concepts in a class by relating piracy to a crime, pirating is illegal, and it has been for a long time. It is unauthorized use or reproduction of someone else’s work, and it was on the rise before Netflix. This topic relates to the challenges of society today because everyone is trying to get free movies, although it is illegal it is still easy to find. I do not think pirating movies is going to stop because it is easy as looking up the movie title then free. I do not see any concerns about pirating because no one is really getting hurt, but the moviemakers are probably losing money. The overall contribution of this study is simply to make people aware that pirating is a type of cybercrime but ever since Netflix came out the rate of pirating has gone down.
Works cited
Makin, David, and Oliver Bowers. “Netflix as a Piracy Disruptor? A Cross-Sectional Test of Accessibility and Affordability on Interest in Piracy.” International Journal of Cyber Criminology 14.2 (2020): 417-32. ProQuest. Web. 25 Oct. 2021.