Understanding Music Sharing in Russia

This paper reviews attitudes toward acceptance and usability of file sharing for music downloading in Russia. There is a significant issue with respect to the copyright law legislation and enforcement. Since infrastructure, market conditions, social and economical situations in developing countries are different from those of developed countries, we decided to apply a well establish theory to a new population. We surveyed 67 young Russian people in terms of their attitudes, perceptions, and technology use for music downloading. As a general model, over 52% amount of variance was explained for in behavioral intention. However, perceived ease of use was not found to be significant or have any predictive power for behavioral intention. More importantly, external variables related to age, gender, Internet connection, and education were not found to have influence on any of the hypothesized variables. This study makes a first step at examining the way music downloading technologies are used in Russia.