The causes of piracy
Despite of a high risk the scale of the IP theft in Poland is very high as it brings profits to the perpetrators. Owners of the platforms with illegally obtained and distributed content derive substantial profits by resorting to cash from the advertising market or directly to the wallets’ of subscribers to these services.
However the most frequent reasons of using the illegal services is a free access to the wide range of content. These declarations are often not related to the material situation of the users and can be an attempt to rationalise their behaviour and not the real cause of tapping into illegal trade of content
Poles are aware of the fact that downloading and dissemination of the pirated content is unlawful. More than half of them agree with the view that piracy is unethical. The same users of the Internet however commonly apply this method to access required content.
Frequently the users have the problem to as differentiate between the legitmate and illegal services. Only a small percentage of responders has been able to identify correctly the services which operate fully legally. Subsequently lack of skills to assess whether a given service is a legitimate one or not cannot be considered the reason for piracy.