Colleague shared pirated material. Is it appropriate for our manager to make me tell the colleague to remove it?

I've informed my line manager about it on two occasions and the response was that I should take responsibility and inform my colleague instead.

Your manager is completely wrong.

Once your manager was informed about the situation, it is this manager's responsibility to either deal with this issue or choose to leave it alone. Shirking that responsibility is simply poor management.

It's completely irresponsible to try and pawn off an awkward task on someone who is not a manager, but is a peer of the new person.

You can choose to be a friend to the new person and provide a gentle reminder about company rules/policy. Or not.

You were right in bringing up the issue with the manager first. Now your manager's instruction is clear. He has asked you to inform the colleague, so you should do so. If nothing changes, you report it back to the manager and let him figure out what to do next.

It is not uncommon for managers to delegate some management tasks to non-manager team members, especially senior team members. This is sometimes even necessary because people tend to pursue everything that a manager says or does as carrying a "manager tag", which sometimes creates mountains out of molehills.

You are absolutely correct that your colleague should know better than sharing pirated material. Your manager had two options to deal with the issue.

1. Talk directly to them and ask them to stop sharing pirated material. Whether the manager intends to or not, they will see this as an official reprimand.
2. Ask a senior team member to talk to them "unofficially". This will hopefully resolve this issue, without the manager getting involved.

There is nothing wrong at all if the manager chose the first option. However, considering that the colleague was trying to be helpful, he probably decided to assume good intentions and give them a chance to save face.

One team, one mission.

As a work community, it's everyone's responsibility to keep everyone else working productively and cooperatively. Your line manager's responsibility is to grade performance, provide top-cover from upper management to keep you from being interrupted for meetings and presentations that disrupt productivity, and ensure that the overall direction of your division is moving along in line with relevant Mission Statements.

Yes, it would be nice if you manager would arbitrate and resolve every minor infraction in your office, but the reality is that you guys are a team, and team members take responsibility for each other. Your line manager's role in that team is that of the team leader, promoting cohesion and finding members for the team that work with that cohesion.

So, get a few of your other coworkers that are like minded, and talk to this person. If after you've spoken with that person, they are unwilling to cease illegal activities, then it is now your line manager's job to remove that person from the team.

Other action that can be performed besides of solutions from other answers: Discuss with your manager organization of a mandatory "training". Invite all newcomers from your team/department/company (depending on rotation per company size or your time)

During the training, include topics like copyright laws, company policies and what actions should be done when "copyright infringement" was detected (escalate to your line manager)

I understand that it is boring and repetitive, especially in big companies but can help avoid such problems done by any new employee in the future.

Am I right to refuse to carry out (what seems to be) the task of my manager?

This all depends on what the word "right" means to you.

If this is a matter of principle to you, and you are prepared to accept whatever consequences arise after disobeying your manager, then yes, it is right.

On the other hand, it seems unwise to risk your job, or standing with your manager, for the relatively simple task of passing along a message to your colleague.

If you refuse, you now potentially share (in the eyes of your manager, rightly or wrongly) in any damages that result from the pirated software.

I agree that your manager should be the one to handle this matter, but in your case, is this a battle worth fighting?

Congratulations! You're in an excellent position.

on two occasions, and their response was I should take responsibility and inform the colleague. I am not in a managerial role, I am just a peer although I've been in this team longer.

They are having you do their role. Excellent.

Am I right to refuse to carry out (what seems to be) the task of my manager?

No way! Comply. Besides the fact that your manager is in a position to delegate tasks to you, there is also the fact that complying is very much to your benefit to do.

In order to receive a promotion, people want to see that you will be able to handle the new tasks. The strongest way to prove that is if you have experience doing the tasks already, or at least something similar (such as doing part of the job). That places the promoters' minds at ease, and places you way ahead of someone who is much more of an unknown.

If you fail, you have a great excuse: You didn't know what you were doing, and that's rather okay. It wasn't really your position to. You can discuss with your manager, and maybe learn something.

But, even better, maybe you succeed. In that case, you've performed a task for your boss. This means you made your boss's life easier. You've also shown you are a capable person. The management will know that if similar situations arise, you will have some positive experience to reflect on, and you've shown that such a situation wasn't too difficult before.

Take advantage of the opportunity that your manager has given you.

As others have said, it is not your duty to deal with this matters. Your manager should do it.

Here are two reasons you can use to convince/jolt your manager into paying attention to piracy.

1 - Pirated PDFs (or apps) can be embedded with malware which can open your company to hacker attacks. They can also contain malicious links to sites that do drive by malware downloads. (Why would someone spend time to crack pdf security to provide you books for free ?) You can google pdf malware or see this link. https://www.sans.org/security-resources/malwarefaq/pdf-overview

2 - A disgruntled employee can report piracy to the authorities and this might/might not end in dire consequences for the company, including loss of face. Here is an example of video game developer crytek being accused of using pirated copies of 3d modeling software: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/far-cry-developer-raided/1100-6087423/

If you need access to a library of technical books as opposed to a few books, then suggest your boss to get safaribooks website accounts. Your colleagues can share the account credentials.

Unless this was going to impact the actual work you were involved in, you should have stayed out of this completely. From the very start, it wasn't your responsibility to police after your team members. If they were to install said software, with knowledge aforethought of its origin, it would have no bearing upon you. You should have only raised this as an issue at the point where anyone was instructing you to install it and the failure to do so would impede your duties.

So NOW, your manager is pushing this off on you to rectify -- which is improper. This is a "hot potato" in that the longer it's in your hands, the more your fingers will get burned. I'd send the e-mail, per the manager's request, and do no more. No more policing!

Dear Xyz: Our manager, Bob, has requested that you remove Software Abc from the company's shared network drive because we don't have legitimate licenses for it.

CC: your manager on the e-mail (as verification that you've sent it), and leave the issue alone. Don't go back to check if it's done; don't "report" on compliance or not. Leave the managing to the manager.