Online piracy poses threat to music, film and software industries. According to Dictionary.com (nd), the definition of piracy is the unauthorized reproduction or use of a book, recording, television program, patented invention or protected product by copyright. This article focuses on the music, software, and e-book industries. Importance of Online Piracy in International Management The problem of online piracy is that businesses are affected and billions of dollars of revenue are lost (Upshaw and Babin, 2010). The authors mentioned that psychological and ethical reasoning allows hacking to remain an accepted behavior (Upshaw and Babin, 2010). International companies want to reduce software piracy rates (Hamister and Braunscheidel, 2013). Music industryAccording to Upshaw and Babin (2010) argue that it takes relatively less time to pirate music due to the ease of downloading and sharing online than for other forms of digital files, such as software. Their study focused on providing insights into the causes, attitudes and reasons for online piracy, which can help businesses be better prepared to deal with piracy and boost legal trade in their products. They proposed that secondary incentives, which may be harder to hack or not hack, could make sales more competitive compared to the "free" offerings of hacking. Likewise, linking an online store to software that manages music and playlists would likely increase sales. Thus, the authors speculate that hardware paired with particular software, such as Apple Corporation's popular combination of iPod hardware and iTunes software, may offer consumers an easier, more reliable, and preferable alternative...... middle of paper... ...2010 study on software piracy. Washington DC: Enterprise Software Alliance. Retrieved from Google Scholar Goldman, D. (2010). "Music's lost decade: Sales cut in half". Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/Hamister, J. and Braunscheidel, M. (2013). Software piracy and protection of intellectual property rights. Journal of the Academy of Information Sciences and Management, 16(1), 15-35. Retrieved from EBSCOhostDictionary.com. (nd). Piracy. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/piracyUpshaw, D. and Babin, LA (2010). Downloading music: fighting online piracy. International Journal of Business and Public Administration, 7(1), 14-26. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Zimerman, M. (2011). Electronic books and piracy: implications/issues for academic libraries. New World of Libraries, 112(1/2), 67-75. do I:10.1108/03074801111100463