The politics of piracy: political ideology and the usage of pirated online media

There is a lack of clarity in information systems research on which factors lead people to use or not use technologies of varying degrees of perceived legality. To address this gap, we use arguments from the information systems and political ideology literatures to theorize on the influence of individuals’ political ideologies on online media piracy. Specifically, we hypothesize that individuals with a more conservative ideology, and thus lower openness to experience and higher conscientiousness, generally engage in less online media piracy. We further hypothesize that this effect is stronger for online piracy technology that is legally ambiguous. Using clickstream data from 3873 individuals in the U.S., we find that this effect in fact exists only for online media piracy technologies that are perceived as legally ambiguous. Specifically, more conservative individuals, who typically have lower ambiguity intolerance, use (legal but ambiguously perceived) pirated streaming websites less, while there is no difference for the (clearly illegal) use of pirated file sharing websites

Myths about musicians and music piracy

Without hesitation, people casually discuss having watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones having accessed it illegally. They are disclosing not only an interest in a TV show, but confessing to a crime – a normalised crime. And by people I mean lots of people – conservative estimates suggest at least a third of the global population engages in digital piracy. An obvious reason why is to get access to media for free – it’s a low-risk, high-reward activity. In terms of music, the focus of this article, my assessment of why is a feeling of poor value for money – this is not the same as simply wanting something for free. And yet, music has never been cheaper in human history (nor have its biggest consumers, young people, had more disposable income). Such is the backdrop of my research into the psychology of music piracy. The search for the motivations which drive engagement in illegal downloading instead yielded insight into the justifications for doing so. Not reasons, excuses. It would appear that people who engage in digital piracy have constructed a belief system, one which is not rooted in reason or logic but in the hearsay that is accumulated from peer association, from sharing and circulating so-called ‘knowledge’ amongst like-minded friends. It’s tantamount to conspiratorial thinking, rejecting claims which contradict deeply held beliefs

The Managing of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Technologies’ Network Effect: An Adaptation of Actor-Network Theory

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technologies have impacted the music industry, including its strategies for the distribution of the musical products, for more than a decade now. As a result, music labels have delayed full digitization of their industry in fear of “online music piracyâ€. The present paper reviews the historical context of the evolution of the music industry from 1999 to 2012. Using Actor-Network theory, the paper examines the strategies that helped the music industry to translate new actors’ effect in order to sustain music labels’ business on their path to digitize music distribution. I will discuss the impact of new digital policies and methods of governing online behavior including the business concept of “entrepreneurship†as they may potentially affect the future of public domain within the framework of consumer rights

Postcolonial Piracy

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Across the global South, new media technologies have brought about new forms of cultural production, distribution and reception. The spread of cassette recorders in the 1970s; the introduction of analogue and digital video formats in the 80s and 90s; the pervasive availability of recycled computer hardware; the global dissemination of the internet and mobile phones in the new millennium: all these have revolutionised the access of previously marginalised populations to the cultural flows of global modernity. Yet this access also engenders a pirate occupation of the modern: it ducks and deranges the globalised designs of property, capitalism and personhood set by the North. Positioning itself against Eurocentric critiques by corporate lobbies, libertarian readings or classical Marxist interventions, this volume offers a profound postcolonial revaluation of the social, epistemic and aesthetic workings of piracy. It projects how postcolonial piracy persistently negotiates different trajectories of property and self at the crossroads of the global and the local

Postcolonial Piracy

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Across the global South, new media technologies have brought about new forms of cultural production, distribution and reception. The spread of cassette recorders in the 1970s; the introduction of analogue and digital video formats in the 80s and 90s; the pervasive availability of recycled computer hardware; the global dissemination of the internet and mobile phones in the new millennium: all these have revolutionised the access of previously marginalised populations to the cultural flows of global modernity. Yet this access also engenders a pirate occupation of the modern: it ducks and deranges the globalised designs of property, capitalism and personhood set by the North. Positioning itself against Eurocentric critiques by corporate lobbies, libertarian readings or classical Marxist interventions, this volume offers a profound postcolonial revaluation of the social, epistemic and aesthetic workings of piracy. It projects how postcolonial piracy persistently negotiates different trajectories of property and self at the crossroads of the global and the local

Informational Privacy and Self-Disclosure Online: A Critical Mixed-Methods Approach to Social Media

This thesis investigates the multifaceted processes that have contributed to normalising identifiable self-disclosure in online environments and how perceptions of informational privacy and self-disclosure behavioural patterns have evolved in the relatively brief history of online communication. Its investigative mixed-methods approach critically examines a wide and diverse variety of primary and secondary sources and material to bring together aspects of the social dynamics that have contributed to the generalised identifiable self-disclosure. This research also utilises the results of the exploratory statistical as well as qualitative analysis of an extensive online survey completed by UCL students as a snapshot in time. This is combined with arguments developed from an analysis of existing published sources and looks ahead to possible future developments. This study examines the time when people online proved to be more trusting, and how users of the Internet responded to the development of the growing societal need to share personal information online. It addresses issues of privacy ethics and how they evolved over time to allow a persistent association of online self-disclosure to real-life identity that had not been seen before the emergence of social network sites. The resistance to identifiable self-disclosure before the widespread use of social network sites was relatively resolved by a combination of elements and circumstances. Some of these result from the demographics of young users, users' attitudes to deception, ideology and trust-building processes. Social and psychological factors, such as gaining social capital, peer pressure and the overall rewarding and seductive nature of social media, have led users to waive significant parts of their privacy in order to receive the perceived benefits. The sociohistorical context allows this research to relate evolving phenomena like the privacy paradox, lateral surveillance and self-censorship to the revamped ethics of online privacy and self-disclosure

Media piracy and enforcement in Brazil : costs and benefits; toward détente in media piracy, Rio de Janeiro (August, 2010)

The project analyzed policing and enforcement measures, media coverage, and the legal framework and institutional field of combat against digital and media piracy; how it is done and by whom, in order to evaluate pros and cons of current laws; who is benefiting, and from what measures and approaches. The results have been positive for public debate and policy recommendations, and for creating an innovative approach to the problem of copyright violations and piracy. Brazilian approaches to intellectual property were originally shaped by import substitution strategies designed to foster the growth of local industry. With detailed appendices in Spanish