Digital Piracy and Stealing: A Comparison on Criminal Propensity

Abstract

Digital piracy is compared to stealing by copyright holders. However, research has consistently found that perpetrators never viewed digital piracy as immoral or unethical, as they would view stealing. This paper offers a direct comparison in terms of digital piracy propensity and stealing propensity to examine whether these two criminal propensities are essentially the same thing, and whether a tendency to justify digital piracy stems from a low level of general morality. The findings seemed to suggest a variation in criminal propensity. Low morality did not always account for digital piracy propensity.