Digital Piracy – What is the Definition of Piracy? (Part 1)

By Jason Cheung on May 24, 2018 | Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

David Cox – Pirate’s Isle (1852). Work in Public Domain

Piracy vs Copyright Infringement

When we talk about piracy, there are two definitions that are commonly used. Piracy, in the traditional sense, refers to maritime piracy, or the plundering and theft of goods from ships and other vessels. While traditional piracy is still common today, contemporary conceptions of piracy are a little bit different. According to Al-Rafee & Cronan, digital piracy is defined as “the illegal copying/downloading of copyrighted software and media files’’ (Al-Rafee & Cronan, 2007, p.528). However, there is a distinct difference between traditional piracy and digital piracy in terms of how the pirate comes to possess the pirated object (traditional piracy) or idea (digital piracy).

When objects are pirated, the owner is dispossessed of the item, and the item is gained by the pirate. In other words, traditional piracy can be described as theft of property, where one party loses something, and another gains. However, in the context of digital piracy, it is not objects, but ideas that are pirated. For example, when someone pirates a music album from an artist, they are not dispossessing the artist of their album, but obtaining unauthorized access to their musical ideas in the form of a copied album. This type of piracy can be described as copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement is understood as the use of works protected by copyright law without permission. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, copyright is defined as “the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something”. Since copyright is dependent on the copyright law of each country, what does Canada say about copyright infringement?

Attitudes and Perceptions of Piracy

Why does digital piracy occur? In their 2010 work, The Attitudes and Behaviours of Illegal Downloaders, Peter Williams, David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands point to several of the attitudes and behaviors that influence a person’s decision to pirate – including economic factors, perceptions of personal and corporate possessions, and anonymity.

Economic Factors

Studies by Lau, Hsu and Shiue (2008) have revealed the attitudinal positions of people that decide to pirate digital material, identifying that people may choose to pirate if they felt like they were being exploited by companies if they had bought a copy of software. As well, market demand was a dominant factor that determined if people committed piracy. If people thought the price charged by the owners of a digital product was too high, they were more likely to seek a pirated copy instead.

Perceptions of Personal and Corporate Possessions

In a 2004 study by Calluzzo and Cante, they discovered that college students are quite ethical when it comes to personal property, personal privacy, and theft. This seems to suggest that in personal encounters, students are not likely to engage in piracy of other people’s ideas. However, student attitudes towards corporate piracy was neutral, neither ethical nor unethical. Williams, Nicholas and Rowlands point out that this lack of an ethical judgement towards corporate piracy suggests that students do not regard corporate piracy as an ethical issue. They correlate this finding with Cronan and Al-Rafee’s 2007 study of university students, in which they discovered that students “didn’t feel a great deal of guilt about pirating digital media; that it was acceptable behavior. There was a low level of guilt (moral obligation) towards digital piracy” (p. 539).

“[Students] didn’t feel a great deal of guilt about pirating digital media; that it was acceptable behavior. There was a low level of guilt (moral obligation) towards digital piracy” (p. 539). – Timothy Paul Cronan & Sulaiman Al-Rafee, 2007.

Anonymity

Sameer Hinduja addresses the effect of anonymity on the decision to pirate digital media. In his 2008 work Deindividuation and Internet Software Piracy, he describes that anonymity, or the state of being unknown, is intrinsic to the medium of the internet. He goes on to posit that being anonymous contributes to the loss of identity when browsing the internet. When a person is de-individualized, they can “feel extricated from responsibility for his or her actions simply because that person no longer has an acute awareness of the identity of self and others” (p.392).

“When a person is de-individualized, they can feel extricated from responsibility for his or her actions” (Hinduja, 2008, p.392).

Perceptions of Information Freedom and Piracy as Information Liberation of a Public Good

Some people believe that since information is a public good, it should be shared freely and openly. Investopedia defines a public good is a “product that one individual can consume without reducing its availability to another individual, and from which no one is excluded”. In Brian Martin’s 1998 work Information Liberation: Challenging the Corruptions of Information Power, he describes that intellectual property is a form of information ownership. He addresses this problem by citing examples, such as the claims of ownership to a multitude of items, including the genetic code to genetically modified soybeans and cotton, and the privatization and appropriation of ideas in the form of patents from the possession of individuals to the possession of organizations. Martin states, “[Intellectual] property is an attempt to create an artificial scarcity in order to give rewards to a few at the expense of the many” (p. 33). For some, this philosophical belief that information should be a freely shared public good leads to pirate behaviour.

This article touched briefly on the definitions and literature on the topic of digital piracy. You can find out more information on what defines piracy, theft, and copyright infringement by searching for these concepts at your local library, or online journal databases, or within other academic resources. Here are the resources used in this article to help you get started. Be sure to check out part two of this series: “Who Decides Canadian Copyright?”

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal or financial advice.

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