The Criminality of Digital Piracy: Is It a Pathway to More Serious Offending?

This chapter focuses on the harm caused by digital piracy and its relationship to other forms of online offending. It discusses how an escalation in online offending might fit into existing scholarship on pathways to criminal behavior. The chapter establishes that digital piracy is a serious offense that can have widespread financial impact, especially when individual acts are scaled. It considers digital piracy as a gateway or co-occurrence with other forms of online deviance. Regarding digital piracy's value in researching other forms of cybercrime, the chapter offers some findings with cross-sectional data from two sources, but these too suffer from methodological limitations. Digital piracy is a phenomenon that affects multiple industries. Public discussion of digital piracy centers on the music, television, and film industries. Digital piracy also affects the software and publication industries. While there are various definitions and methodologies of digital piracy, the framework is consistent.