Reasons Affecting Frequency of File-Sharing among Finnish Internet Users

Abstract

The article examines file-sharing behavior on illegal file-sharing services. We build on an Internet survey (N=6,083) we conducted to Finnish users in 2007. Using the survey data we examine how the respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics associate the file-sharing. We also examine whether knowledge of law has any impact on file-sharing behavior. We find that the frequent and the infrequent P2P-users share several common attributes with each other. Frequent users are clearly more often male than female, are younger, and possess lower educational qualifications than infrequent users. The results also indicate that the people who are active in P2P-users have weaker legal knowledge about digital copyright issues. The findings and the use of the survey method carry implications for legal and social science scholar work that examines the illegal file-sharing phenomenon.

Keywords: Copyright, piracy, Peer-to-peer, file sharing, moral, empirical studies