Neutralising the practice of digital piracy – a case of Poland
Marcinkowski Jakub (),
Czetwertyński Sławomir (),
Markowska Małgorzata () and
Sokołowski Andrzej ()
Additional contact information
Marcinkowski Jakub: Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Wroclaw, Poland
Czetwertyński Sławomir: Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Wroclaw, Poland
Markowska Małgorzata: Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Wroclaw, Poland
Sokołowski Andrzej: Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski University in Cracow, Cracow, Poland
Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration & Economics, 2024, vol. 14, issue 2, 37-57
Abstract:
Digital piracy, file-sharing, and generally unauthorised copying of digital information goods is a significant problem for the film, music and publishing industries. In the internet age, it has gained a massive and global character. The scale of this problem is surprising, mainly because digital piracy is commonly considered negative or illegal. That raises the question, how is it possible that although some unauthorised copying practices are illegal, the phenomenon is widespread, especially in the context of personal preferences and rationalization? This article attempts to answer this question in the case of Poland, based on the theory of neutralisation, which explains how people justify their actions to free themselves from the feeling of shame related to violating the law or immoral activity. In order to be able to answer the above-formulated research question, it was decided to conduct a survey on a sample of 1,000 adult Poles. The research material was collected in August 2020 using a Computer-Assisted Web Interview. Exploratory Factor Analysis has shown that people claiming to use unauthorised (“pirate”) sources of access to information goods such as movies, music, or books justify it by claiming that it is not very harmful and nobody gets hurt. As a result, it is plausible to argue that the neutralisation theory explains some practices involving unauthorised copying in Poland, including pirating.
Keywords: unauthorised copying; digital piracy; copyrights; file-sharing; techniques of neutralisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/wrlae-2024-0006 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:wrolae:v:14:y:2024:i:2:p:37-57:n:1002
DOI: 10.2478/wrlae-2024-0006
Access Statistics for this article
Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration & Economics is currently edited by Artur Kozłowski
More articles in Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration & Economics from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().