ABSTRACT
Digital le sharing, which is also occasionally referred to as peer-to-peer (P2P) le sharing or digital piracy, refers to the downloading of movies, music, or so¯ware via the Internet or via a P2P network (Higgins, Wolf, & Marcum, 2008; Holsapple, Iyengar, Jin, & Rao, 2008). Over the last decade, the issue of digital le sharing has seen a dramatic increase in interest from legislators as well as legal, economics, and criminological experts (Berger, 2001;
Introduction 209 Brief History of File Sharing 211 ›e Evolution of Neutralization ›eory 213 ›e Present Study 215 Neutralization and Rationalization Techniques 216
Denial of Injury 217 Denial of Victim 218 Everybody Else Is Doing It 218 Condemnation of the Condemners 219 Metaphor of the Ledger 220 Entitlement 220
Discussion 221 Need for Future Research 222 Conclusion 223 References 224
Oberholzer & Strumpf, 2005; Rochelandet & LeGuel, 2005; Higgins, 2007; Hinduja, 2007). Although interest in the topic has grown dramatically and more scholarly works are now addressing the phenomenon, there is still some confusion concerning the terminology used when addressing le sharing. Some researchers refer to the act of sharing les via the Internet or P2P networks as digital piracy, whereas others refer to the act as intellectual property the”. For many people, the term piracy may invoke an image of nancial gain; however, in terms of technological techniques, digital piracy has been dened as “the purchase of counterfeit products at a discount to the price of the copyrighted product, and illegal le sharing of copyrighted product over peer-topeer computer networks” (Hill, 2007, p. 9). ›rough the use of this denition, the concept of nancial gain is removed from consideration. Although the term digital le sharing is used throughout this chapter, note that the terms digital piracy, digital le sharing, and intellectual property the” have become synonymous throughout the majority of the scholarly literature.
