The Origins and Impacts of the Swedish File-Sharing Movement: a Case Study
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http://www.diva-portal.org This is the published version of a paper published in Critical Studies in Peer Production (CSPP). Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Andersson, J. (2011) The origins and impacts of the Swedish file-sharing movement: A case study. Critical Studies in Peer Production (CSPP), 1(1): 1-18 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/3.0/ Oekonux is a nonprofit organization devoted to the theoretical and practical advancement of peer production, that later changed name to The Journal of Peer Production (JoPP). http://peerproduction.net/ Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-22494 The origins and impacts of the Swedish file-sharing movement: A case study Jonas Andersson* Summary If it is possible to speak of a coherent file-sharing movement in Sweden, what are the principal societal factors shaping it? This paper contextualises the recent history of Swedish peer-to-peer-based file-sharing as forming part of a wider shift in politics towards a late-modern collective ethic. Everyday file-sharers operate as `occasional activists', as pirate institutions not only speak for, but also run and build the networks. Such institutions - The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and The Pirate Party - cannot be explained by invoking market logics, online communitarianism, or political motivation alone. The cyberliberties activism animating these hubs is connected to the larger framework of balancing utilitarianism, nationalism, individual autonomy and collectivism in Sweden. Further, the emergent Swedish file-sharing justificatory regime hinges on a general view of what the internet is, what it is good for, and how it should look in the future, as the file-sharer argumentation rests on the inevitability of unrestricted file exchange on the internet, while the industrialist concerns of the cultural industries emphasize instead how exchange should be regulated and sanctioned by accountable providers. Keywords Peer-to-peer, file-sharing, The Pirate Bay, cyberliberties, individualization, post-materialism, Sweden. Introduction over mandatory regulation by means of the centre surveying the periphery (i.e. panoptic regulation). [2] When compared to the traditionalist, national bias of To begin with, I define peer-to-peer-based file- the established polity, digital politics [1] are sharing as the unrestricted duplication of digitized characterised by a transnational, globalized and highly media content between autonomous end-nodes on the technophiliac exchange. The popularity of file-sharing, Internet. During the last decade, it has become an and the prevalence of activist hubs like The Pirate extremely popular pastime ± largely involving music, Bay, can be seen as indicative of a wider shift in late- film, games and other media, which is copied without modern societies that is not unique to Sweden, the permission of the copyright holders. Due to its although I will argue in this article that Sweden can be illegality, the popular understanding of the phenome- seen as a particularly acute exponent of this non tends to overstate its conflictual elements, framing development. International surveys (cf. Inglehart- it within a legalistic `copyfight'. This is most markedly Welzel, 2005), Swedish scholars (Berggren & manifested in the dichotomized image of file-sharers Trägårdh, 2006; Ilshammar, 2010) and American as `pirates' allegedly opposed to the entertainment scholars (Zuckerman, 2008) have established that industry. However, I do not believe that file-sharing is Swedish society is one of the most secular-rational and a phenomenon which is a priori opposed to the self-expressivity-directed in the world, characterized current, neo-liberal, capitalist world order. Instead, it is also by a typically social-democrat legacy of egalita- borne out of it ± not least, since it hinges upon the rianism and high degrees of civil trust in the state, individual end-user's desire to acquire entertainment, where individual autonomy is generated by means of a and to maximise both pleasure and efficiency. In relatively strong state apparatus (Berggren & allowing for this consumer agency to come about ± in Trägårdh, 2006). However, as in many developed aggregated, not entirely foreseeable ways ± it has countries, the older, more authoritarian, statist order dislodged certain established industries (such as the seems to be gradually replaced by more individualized sales of audio CDs), while creating potentials for values, stressing voluntary self-regulation (i.e. entirely new ones. At the same time, file-sharing is protocol-like forms of regulation; cf. Galloway, 2004) being harnessed in ways that act as opposition to * Södertörn University, Sweden. Email: [email protected]. CSPP - RS 1-1 (2011) 1 various centres of established, institutional order, media. Consequently, the debate has arguably been while potentially reinforcing other forms of power and relatively sophisticated compared to other countries, domination. As Patrick Burkart (2010) has showed, the not least given the wide popularity and controversy of dynamic between self-regulation and regulation from sites like The Pirate Bay (TPB) and the relative above is not a priori given. Commercial, sequestered success of the Swedish Pirate Party in recent years. portals like iTunes and Facebook would supplant (c) Not only are high degrees of technical everyday fan behaviour, like sharing music and trading competence common among the general population. tasks, with a form of voluntary self-surveillance, Typical modern values, such as secular belief in where community members knowingly adhere to rationality and self-fulfilment, are more extreme in standards and cultivate their obedience in order to Sweden than in virtually any other country (Inglehart personally gain from it. Like the self-regulation in p2p & Welzel, 2005, Zuckerman, 2009). Sweden ranks environments, this self-surveillance is voluntary. Yet, extremely high in surveys of so-called `postmaterialist different infrastructures allow for altogether different values' (e.g. public concern for issues such as political scopes for action, and the infrastructures for p2p-based participation, freedom of speech, environmental pro- fibrle-sharing clearly allows for a wider range of such tection and beautiful cities) compared to older, normalized uses and behaviours than commercial, materialist values reflecting greater existential insecu- proprietary infra-structures. rity (e.g. public concern for issues such as economic I want to contextualise file-sharing in Sweden, endurance, rising food prices, or crime rates). The in an attempt to merge insights about the technical more widespread postmaterialist values are in a logic of file-sharing networks with socio-cultural society, as they are in Sweden, the more the citizenry insights. File-sharing allows for great latitude when it values personal autonomy (relative to income) as a comes to the end-user, however requiring both source of subjective well-being: knowledge and directed action on the side of the user, and an overarching ubiquity and standardization in Largely driven by rising standards of terms of infrastructure. Ultimately, the article can be living and the widespread sense that read as a case study of how subjects in late modernity existential security can be taken for are increasingly governed by means of an odd granted, a sea change in value priorities marriage of standardization and voluntary self- has been taking place, away from regulation, where the relative freedom of consumption materialist scarcity values towards entails a constant, reflexive management of the self. post-materialist self-expression values. (Delhey, 2009: 31) Notes on Swedish modernity Why has file-sharing become so popular in Sweden, The older scarcity values tend to be rooted in a and how does this country make for an interesting case generational, collective experience of poverty and war, study? The idea of a truly flat, de-territorialized with industry, wage work, nation state, and class panacea of globalization is largely a myth (Hafez, affiliation as its constitutive elements. Inglehart's 2007). In fact, an allegedly `global' media system like original observation (1971) has later been moderated the internet is both locally produced and sequestered, and amended (see Abramson, 2011 for an overview), in terms of language and infrastructure. [3] By taking as postmaterialism has for example been adjoined by concrete examples, and making particular case studies, wider recognition of domestic work and feminized we can reveal the complexity of an otherwise idealized consumption (see Giddens, 1998). [4] According to image of this global network. My own research has Beck, Giddens and Lash (Beck, 1994) there is an focused on Swedish file-sharing; how it takes place, as emerging model of citizenship which is gradually well as how it is invoked and justified by the actors superseding older modes of sociality: active individua- involved. In this article, I will outline how p2p-based lism. These newer, more active forms of individualism file-sharing has seen a particularly strong development try to make up for the potentially egoistic or in Sweden, while having been referred to in various opportunist attitudes of an individualistic way of life