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Peer-To-Peer-Based File-Sharing Beyond the Dichotomy of 'Downloading Is Theft' Vs. 'Information Wants to Be Free': How Swedish File-Sharers Motivate Their Action

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Peer-To-Peer-Based File-Sharing Beyond the Dichotomy of 'Downloading Is Theft' Vs. 'Information Wants to Be Free': How Swedish File-Sharers Motivate Their Action Peer-to-peer-based file-sharing beyond the dichotomy of 'downloading is theft' vs. 'information wants to be free': How Swedish file-sharers motivate their action Jonas Andersson Goldsmiths, University of London for the degree of PhD in Media & Communications 1 (346) Abstract Peer-to-peer-based file-sharing beyond the dichotomy of 'downloading is theft' vs. 'information wants to be free': How Swedish file-sharers motivate their action This thesis aims to offer a comprehensive analysis ofpeer-to-peer-basedJile-sharing by focusing on the discourses about use, agency and motivation involved, and how they interrelate with the infrastructural propelties of file-sharing. Peer-to-peer-based file-sharing is here defined as the unrestricted duplication of digitised media content between autonomous end-nodes on the Internet. It has become an extremely popular pastime, largely involving music, film, games and other media which is copied without the permission of the copyright holders. Due to its illegality, the popular understanding of the phenomenon tends to overstate its conflictual elements, framing it within a legalistic 'copyfight'. This is most markedly manifested in the dichotomised image of file-sharers as 'pirates' allegedly opposed to the enteltainment industry. The thesis is an attempt to counter this dichotomy by using a more heterodox synthesis of perspectives, aiming to assimilate the phenomenon's complex intermingling of technological, infrastructural, economic and political factors. The geographic context of this study is Sweden, a country characterised by early broadband penetration and subsequently widespread unrestricted file-sharing, paralleled by a lively and well-informed public debate. This gives geographic specificity and further context to the file-sharers' own justificatory discourses, serving to highlight and problematise some principal assumptions about the phenomenon. The thesis thus serves as a geographically contained case study which will have analytical implications outside of its immediate local context, and as an inquiry into two aspects of file-sharer argumentation: the ontological understandings of digital technology and the notion of agency. These, in turn, relate to particular forms of sociality in late modernity. Although the agencies and normative forces involved are innumerable, controversies about agency tend to order themselves in a more comprehensive way, as they are appropriated discursively. The invocation to agency that is found in the justificatory discourses - both in the public debate and among individual respondents - thus allows for a more productive and critically attentive understanding of the phenomenon than previously. Keywords: Internet, file-sharing, p2p, peer-to-peer, copyfight, copyright, piracy, Sweden, The Pirate Bay, discourse, technological agency, ontopolitics, technological determinism, justification, motivation, morality, convergence, actor-network theory, infrastructure, convenience, activism, opportunism 3 (346) Abstract. ................................•.....................................................................................•................................ 3 Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 6 1.1. Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................................6 1.2. Topic of study and geographic context ............................................................................................................................... 7 1.3. Research question: What is p2p·based file-sharing? ......................................................................................................... 8 1.4. Structure, epistemology, methodology and overall approach ........................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2: literature review ..................................................................................................................... 22 2.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................22 2.2. Outlining the dichotomy: Is there a 'copyfight: and how is it constituted? ........................................................................ 26 2.2.1. The 'copyleft' appraisal .......................................................................................................................................... 31 2.2.2. New technology as facilitator of activist media uses .............................................................................................. 40 2.3. 'Piracy' and gift economies ............................................................................................................................................... 50 2.3.1. Ontological presuppositions underpinning the notion of 'gift economies' .............................................................. 53 2.4. Critiques of the main 'copyleft' standpoints ....................................................................................................................... 57 2.5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................................63 Chapter 3: Method .........................................................................................................................•........... 67 3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................67 3.2. Not a traditional ethnographic method .............................................................................................................................. 67 3.3. Methodology - from theoretical standpoint to practical implementation ........................................................................... 71 3.3.1. The notion of agency, and how justificatory discourses relate to it ........................................................................ 71 3.3.2. Prescriptive formations and material alliances ...................................................................................................... 77 3.3.3. To infer general claims from situated particularities, and the reliance on pre-existing accounts ........................... 83 3.3.4. Reflexivity: the researcher's own account of other people's accounts of the world ............................................... 89 3.3.5. World-views of subjective respondents versus world-views implicit in normative formations ................................ 92 3.4. The actual fieldwork: development and motivation ........................................................................................................... 94 3.4.1. The specificity of discourse-based fieldwork on the Internet ................................................................................. 97 3.4.2. Sampling ................................................................................................................................................................99 3.4.3. Email as a context and interview tool, and 'long interview'l'expert interview' as a concept.. ............................... 100 3.4.4. Sequence and ordering of questions ................................................................................................................... 105 3.5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 108 Chapter 4: Historical and technical conditions .................................................................................... 109 4.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................... 109 4.2. Writing technological history: some initial considerations ............................................................................................... 111 4.3. Peer-to-peer as architecture ........................................................................................................................................... 120 4.4. File-sharing nation: a phenomenon "gaining ground" ..................................................................................................... 125 4.4.1. Gnutella ............................................................................................................................................................... 126 4.4.2. FastTrack ............................................................................................................................................................. 127 4.4.3. BitTorrent ............................................................................................................................................................. 129 4.5. Prevalent metaphors: 'pyramids' and 'darknets' ............................................................................................................. 134 4.6. Rapid historical change, delineated into alleged 'phases" of system design .................................................................. 138 4.7. The
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