Real Research, Real Adults

Why people
actually pirate.

Most studies on piracy ask college students. This one asked real adults. The findings, drawn from Kos Koklic, Vida, Bajde and Culiberg (2014), reveal a simple chain: how people feel about the harm, how much they fear the tech risk, what attitude they form, and what they end up doing.

Open the dashboard →Read the insights
01 · How the Pieces Connect

The model, at a glance.

Two forces feed into a person's attitude toward piracy. That attitude then drives intent. Involvement (how much the topic matters to you) decides how strong that final link actually is.

−0.29−0.20+0.47−0.22 directIssue InvolvementModeratorMoral IntensityHarm to societyPerceived Technical RiskHarm to your machineAttitudeHow you feel about itIntentionWhat you plan to do

Standardised path coefficients from Kos Koklic et al. (2014), Table 3.

02 · Impacts of Piracy, By the Book

The two kinds of harm.

The research splits the cost of piracy into two clean buckets. One looks outward at society. The other looks inward at the pirate's own machine.

Bucket 1
Impact on society

Also called moral intensity. It captures the harm done to creators, studios, labels, and the wider creative economy.

  • Magnitude of consequences
    The sheer size of the financial and structural damage done to industries like music, film, and software.
  • Probability of effect
    How likely it really is that creators and companies feel the hit when copies leak.
  • Temporal immediacy
    How fast the damage lands. An immediate shock to a release versus slow, long-term economic decay.
Bucket 2
Impact on the pirate

Called perceived technical risk. Not lawyers or fines, but what happens on your own machine when you grab a sketchy file.

  • Software piracy risk
    The very real chance of infecting your computer with a disruptive virus or hidden malware tucked inside the download.
  • Data security threat
    The risk of exposing private data, local files, and saved passwords to hackers who bundle stealers into pirated apps.
  • Physical damage
    The genuine threat of destructive code that can fry components and cause actual hardware damage to your system.