Study: Warnings Are Just As Effective At Dissuading Digital Piracy As Threats Of Fines

Regarding warning messages, researchers evaluated them to be sure they could be understood with a literacy level of 5th grade or lower. They initially hypothesized that the threat of fines alone was most likely to scare off illegal downloaders. But they were surprised to find that people are equally leery of being monitored by unknown entities — and pairing the repercussions proved most effective.