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Theories Of Digital Piracy

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The Theories behind Digital Piracy

Introduction
The topic of Digital Piracy has been widely debated for the past decade as there has been a surge in copyright infringements. The phenomenon of digital piracy has been prevalent since the days of dial-up modems and online bulletin boards, and it continues to be relevant to industry and society today. People have been gathering software and illegally “cracking” the copyright protections placed on the software to make it available to everyone else for free. When people use the word "piracy" for copyright infringement, it usually means "selling of many copies without permission”. The aim of this paper is to identify this type of crime, give a real life example of this crime taking place and to …show more content…

Cornish and Clarke presented that rational choice had two main components. The first component of the theory was that individuals would perform criminal acts if they believed that these acts would be to their benefit. This sort of determination required a basic decision-making process. Criminal decision-making would be a rational processing of the cost (i.e., the pain) and the benefits of the act (i.e., the pleasure, thrill, or excitement). When the individual viewed that the criminal act would provide more of a benefit than a cost, the individual would perform the criminal act. Second, Cornish and Clarke suggested that rational choice theory required a crime-specific focus. The crime specific focus allowed for sensitivity to the differences in the information necessary for different …show more content…

The theory claims that rational individuals are attracted to pleasurable acts instead of painful ones. It casts crime as a pleasurable act. Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that crimes are acts of force or fraud that an individual pursues to satisfy his own interest. Crimes, in their view, are acts that are simple and easy to perform, and provide excitement and instant gratification. Further, crimes do not require any specific form of motivation. In fact, crime only requires an opportunity and an assessment that the act will provide pleasure. Thus, their view of crime is similar to the aspects that are associated with digital piracy. Gottfredson and Hirschi maintain that an individual’s self-control is his ability to resist temptation when an opportunity presents itself. When individuals cannot resist an opportunity for crime, they have low

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