Suchergebnisse

"Piracy" is a concept that seems everywhere in the contemporary world. From the big screen with the dashing Jack Sparrow, to the dangers off the coast of Somalia; from the claims by the Motion Picture Association of America that piracy funds terrorism, to the political impact of pirate parties in countries like Sweden and Germany. While the spread of piracy provokes responses from the shipping and copyright industries, the reverse is also true: for every new development in capitalist technologies, some sort of "piracy" moment emerges. This is maybe most obvious in the current ideologisation of Internet piracy where the rapid spread of so called Pirate Parties is developing into a kind of global political movement. While the pirates of Somalia seem a long way removed from Internet pirates illegally downloading the latest music hit or, it is the assertion of this book that such developments indicate a complex interplay between capital flows and relations, late modernity, property rights and spaces of contestation. That is, piracy seems to emerge at specific nodes in capitalist relations that create both blockages and leaks between different social actors. ; PiracyLab

Rates of digital piracy, defined by Gopal, et al. (2004: 3) as 'the illegal act of copying digital goods for any reason other than backup, without permission from or compensation to the copyright holder', appear to be rising despite increasingly stringent methods employed by both legislators and the industries affected to curtail it. The harm it causes the industries is also increasing; affecting everyone from producers to consumers. This study explores the aetiology of digital piracy; specifically whether students in the United Kingdom neutralise the guilt for their actions through the use of Sykes and Matza's (1957) techniques of neutralisation. Through the data collected from an online survey (n=114) this study finds that students typically neutralise their guilt when committing piracy through an 'appeal to higher loyalties' and a belief that 'everyone else does it'. The use of these specific techniques implies that piracy has become a social norm for students at university who do not see it as morally wrong. The study concludes by suggesting the policy implications of these findings and potential avenues for further research.