The Practice of Downloading copyrighted files among adolescents in Poland: Correlations between piracy and other risky and protective behaviours online and offline

The goal of the research was to present the scale of digital piracy (narrowed down to file downloading) among adolescents from the perspective of protective and accelerating factors. The research method was a diagnostic survey. The study was conducted in 2017 in Poland among 4121 adolescents, the average age of whom was 15.81 (55% of the respondents were females). Based on the data collected, we can conclude that the factors that accelerate digital piracy the most are: using download supporting software, the peer exchange of pirated files, and the lack of parental control. Regular piracy (at least once a week) is practiced by approximately twelve of the students and is most often connected with downloading music. Boys download copyrighted files illegally much more often than girls. Piracy is a non-homogeneous phenomenon as there are different conditions that relate to the downloading of music, movies, and software. Downloading and sharing music is treated more like a habit than as piracy. The results suggest that, given the aspect of the accompanying mechanisms, we should be careful when interpreting piracy as homogeneous and common among adolescents. From the perspective of educational practices, the presented data show there is still a necessity to strengthen digital literacy related to legal aspects. •Digital piracy is a non-homogeneous phenomenon.•Only dozen or so percent of adolescents are involved in regular piracy.•Sharing files offline favours dowloading files from the Internet.•Young men download file much more often than girls.•The role of parents and religiousness are the factors that reduce the frequency of file download.