Neuroscientists Discover Why Internet Pirates Don’t Feel Guilty

[Batu69]

Entertainment industry groups often equate illegal downloading to theft, an act that many people would feel guilty about carrying out. However, millions of downloaders simply do not feel any guilt when they transfer infringing content to their machines, so why is that? Scientists in Australia think they've found the answer.

 

Every month millions of people download and share movies, TV shows, music, software and ebooks without obtaining permission from copyright holders.

In most countries that activity is illegal, meaning that huge numbers of Internet users are breaking the law on a daily basis.

 

While there are plenty of criminals around, most illegal downloaders don’t equate their hobby to being tantamount to theft, despite huge efforts by copyright holders to paint it so. To most it just doesn’t ‘feel’ the same and now scientists in Australia think they may have discovered why.

 

A three-stage study published by Robert Eres, a PhD student within the Social Neuroscience lab led by Dr Pascal Molenberghs at the Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, investigated why normally law-abiding people don’t have a problem with breaking laws which cover intangible items.

 

To that end the researchers investigated what happens inside the brains of people when they pirate intangible digital content versus stealing a physical item such as a handbag.

 

To begin, the researchers issued a questionnaire to discover whether people are more likely to “steal” non-tangible items (such as movie or music files) than their physical counterparts (DVDs and CDs). They found that their test subjects were indeed more likely to “steal” items that have no physical embodiment, no matter what their cost or associated risk of getting caught.

 

Next up the researchers carried out two sets of brain scans to try and understand why people are more happy to “steal” items that have no physical presence.

“The first brain imaging experiment revealed that people’s brains were much more active when trying to imagine intangible compared to tangible objects, which suggests people have more difficulty with representing intangible items,” the researchers write.

 

 

During the second set of scans, test subjects were asked to imagine themselves illegally or legally obtaining physical and digital versions of items such as movies, music, TV shows and software.

 

What the researchers found was that when imagining stealing an item, participants showed much more activation in the lateral orbital frontal cortex of their brains. Among other things, this part of the brain is associated with feelings of moral sensitivity and it was much more active when test subjects were thinking about stealing physical items than it was for intangible items such as digital files.

 

 

“The findings from the two brain imaging experiments suggest that people are processing the intangible and tangible objects very differently within their brains,” Mr Eres says.

Social Neuroscience lab head Dr Pascal Molenberghs says that this suggests that people have less problem breaking laws covering intangible items since they experience more difficulties imagining them so their brains feel less guilty when they “steal” them.

 

“Evolutionarily, we have interacted more with physical goods – particularly in respect to ownership so that is why we are hardwired to respect these more compared to intangible items such as ideas or software,” Dr Molenberghs says.

 

Finally, the researchers believe that the results of study have wider implications to other areas of online life, beyond Internet piracy.

“Overall, the data presented here suggests that the differences we see in moral behaviors (particularly concerning contexts of non-physical interactions; piracy, online surveillance and espionage) may be due to the differences in their neural representation and the discerning level of guilt felt for tangible items compared with intangible,” they conclude.

 

Article source

[dMog]

nope...pirates are pirates ...plain and simple  no need for no stinking long winded study with picture

[Sylence]

Nice, now we have more excuses to justify pirating^^

 

if it ain't tangible it ain't pirating. end of story

[pc71520]

Neuroscientists...

[player]

Quote

Junk-science at it's finest.

Quote

Dr Molenberghs, I don't think it has really occurred to you that this has practically nothing to do with it. I don't think you really look around at current events revolving around as to why people actually do this.

 

Here's a food for thought - if physical objects could regenerate in place of the original after "stealing" it, would there be any guilt? No, because it'd be there for someone else to enjoy at their own leisure and there'd be one for everyone.

 

Just like files, the idea of "digital stock" is a joke because it's decided by how much the distributor wants to give out. When, it's entirely possible to copy the file over and over to another person and another person. Eventually, everyone has something and everyone is in bliss without the painstaking pressure on people's shoulders to buy something ridiculous over their living expense. And not even giving said person full freedom when they have it.

 

So, go fuck yourself. Because this is the kind of bullshit study lawyers use to try and get people off when they kill people and blame it on video games. This idea of not interpreting reality from fantasy. Only this idea of intangibility and tangibility pasted over and now indirectly saying pirates are mentally ill and that they don't have feelings with downloading files.

 

No, we just know when someone is ripping us off. BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE!

 

[macnavarra]

That studies most be related   with the old Pirates phantom pain.

 

[edwardecl]

Theft is depriving someone of their goods.

Copying something is not depriving them of anything, in fact it could be argued the other way around, they are not depriving you of your money.

I think it's funny people get into businesses where their content can be easily copied, then complain when it's copied. You have to have some expectation going in that a lot of people are not going to be paying for it. Just like people buying the stuff have to have some exception of the thing being sold is a piece of crap that doesn't work properly, and in some cases with music plagiarised crap.

In some cases it's the opposite of guilty when you do it if you look at the company publishing it and their track record.

[anana]

One more important thing, from my experience. When the first time pirating, the amygdala defeated by oxytocin because of the happy fellings of it. The process is repeated finally stop amygdala activity when performing the pirating activity.

[mikie]

Most times you have no idea if you watch something,,, if is it crooked, or is it on some site has good stuff to watch.  Is all the free stuff on Hulu pirated? How about Crackle, Amazon and the others ?

[C.G.B. Spender]

The greatest win for the cretins in Holywood & government is the imprinting of the terms pirate (equals thief) and "stealing" upon perception of people who share data and these very same people are so brainwashed they take "pride" in branding themselves with the word pirate. When you download a movie you're not stealing it you're copying it. Whether legally or illegaly I don't give a rat's behind about. Point is there is no theft occurring as no property have been lost, if anything there just became more of the same.

 

By imprinting these words meaning stealing/thieving in connection with sharing digital data over internet they have already won as it will be never nothing more than just stealing even if it isn't. I don't feel guilty downloading hundreds of gigabytes of movies every month simply because I do not steal anything, my conscience is clear in this regard. Had I been stealing blu-ray discs in local shop I'd most certainly feel guilty. No need for expensive MRI tests, common sense suffices.

[alvinblah]

and with that, I def wouldn't be stealing all the same physical goods that I pirate. I didn't need to see that GI Joe movie, I would never buy it...but when piracy is just a big library, I'll check it out.