Neutralising the practice of digital piracy – a case of Poland

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.