{"id":3140,"date":"2016-02-07T18:30:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T18:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=3140"},"modified":"2016-02-07T18:30:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T18:30:31","slug":"god-can-stop-piracy-research-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=3140","title":{"rendered":"God Can Stop Piracy, Research Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/freeman.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-117356\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/freeman.jpg\" alt=\"freeman\" width=\"275\" height=\"215\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-117356\"><\/a>&#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; is one of the Ten Commandments many Christians hold in high regard. <\/p>\n<p>However, the general public generally doesn&#8217;t view piracy as outright stealing. In fact, many people see piracy as morally justified. <\/p>\n<p>To examine this contradiction more closely, a new study (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/15332969.2015.1112172\">paywall<\/a>) published by researchers from Australia looked at the relationship is between religious attitudes and piracy.<\/p>\n<p>The study was conducted among members of a Christian mega-church in Indonesia who were divided into various categories, based on the strength of their religion. The results shed an interesting light on how piracy and religion interact. <\/p>\n<p>The first interesting result is that people&#8217;s attitudes towards piracy correlate with how religious they are. That is, people who are more religious have less favorable opinions about digital piracy. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230; consistent with our expectation, it was found that the highly religious respondents have a stronger attitude against digital piracy than those who are less religious,&#8221; the paper reads. <\/p>\n<p>The questions above covered general attitudes towards piracy. For example, that it hurts the music industry or that it&#8217;s against the law. A second set of questions focused on actual behavioral change. <\/p>\n<p>Here, the same people were asked whether they would be less likely to pirate if X told them to. The X differed per question ranging from their pastor, friends, religion to God himself. <\/p>\n<p>The responses to these questions are quite revealing, showing that only God himself can make a strong impact on people&#8217;s piracy habits.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Among the four referents (pastor, friends, religion, God) included in this study, only God was the referent with the strongest influence that could discourage respondents from buying pirated media,&#8221; the researchers report.<\/p>\n<p>While God can impact the behavior of less, moderately and highly religious people, he has the strongest impact on the latter. Interestingly, however, even highly religious people won&#8217;t change their behavior if their pastor or religion tells them to.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No significant differences were found in items relating to &#8216;religion&#8217; and &#8216;my pastor,&#8217; implying that respondents\u2019 motivation to comply with these referents are not influenced by the extent of their religiosity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers the effect can be explained by the fact that many people don&#8217;t view piracy as unethical. This is reflected in previous research as well as their study, which found that respondents generally don&#8217;t see digital piracy behavior as sinful.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Previous studies found that those who are actively involved in digital piracy do not view piracy as being illegal or unethical and only 10% of American teenagers believe that digital piracy is morally wrong,&#8221; the researchers write. <\/p>\n<p>To address this, the researchers suggest &#8220;instilling moral values about digital piracy&#8221; at a very young age.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Religious institutions, in cooperation with educational institutions, could work together to communicate a strong message against digital piracy,&#8221; the researchers propose in their paper.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright holders will appreciate the suggestion, and they are already working on educating young kids early on, both in the U.S and the UK. <\/p>\n<p>Traditional anti-piracy efforts also continue, including a planned campaign featuring none other than <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/morgan-freeman-movie-pirates-have-tiny-useless-penises-141214\/\">Morgan Freeman<\/a>, who coincidentally played God in a few movies and is currently working on a <a href=\"http:\/\/deadline.com\/2016\/01\/the-story-of-god-morgan-freeman-national-geographic-channel-1201677380\/\">documentary series<\/a> featuring the Almighty. <\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/\">TF<\/a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102\/\">torrent sites<\/a> and  <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228\/\">ANONYMOUS VPN services<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?a=9cwDNC9zXF8:eY_gr0zLNOE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?a=9cwDNC9zXF8:eY_gr0zLNOE:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?i=9cwDNC9zXF8:eY_gr0zLNOE:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Torrentfreak\/~4\/9cwDNC9zXF8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nSource: TorrentFreak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; is one of the Ten Commandments many Christians hold in high regard. However, the general public generally doesn&#8217;t view piracy as outright stealing. In fact, many people see piracy as morally justified. To examine this contradiction more closely, a new study (paywall) published by researchers from Australia looked at the relationship &#8230; <a title=\"God Can Stop Piracy, Research Finds\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=3140\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}