Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Abstract

This article approaches the recent debates about copyright and piracy from a cultural and historical perspective, discussing how of the problems surrounding intellectual property rights reflect cultural conflicts that are central to cultural studies. It sets out with a study of how international copyright norms developed in nineteenth-century Europe and were implemented in two different national contexts: Sweden and USA. This historical background shows how copyright has been embedded in the cultural history of Europe and intertwined with the idea of an evolving Western civilization. The examples from the past are thus used to highlight the underlying cultural implications that affect the contemporary discussions. Particular interest is paid to how the historical association between the spread of copyright and the development of civilization has affected the understanding of Asian piracy and Western file sharing today, and how a multitude of social movements both in the West and the third world simultaneously challenge the cultural legitimacy of the current system of intellectual property rights. Eventually this is also taken as an example of how law and culture intersects and how the broad, interdisciplinary field of copyright studies that has emerged over the last decade can be seen as an extension of the cultural studies tradition.

Media Innovation Strategies for Sustaining Competitive Advantage: Evidence from Music Download Stores in Iran

“…As to our second research question, it became clear that issues such as copyright challenges and governmental permission barriers are limiting the capabilities of digital music distributors to reach a sustainable competitive advantage [17]. Regarding copyright challenges, first, the most critical thing to foster Iranian digital distributors is the development of a 'copyright culture' [88,89]. As mentioned earlier, social innovation plays a key role in gaining competitive advantage [90,91].…”

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“…Piracy, as an act or an ideology, may not present a solution to all processes of enclosure, but it has an ability to articulate enclosure as a practical and political problem by showing how it interferes with people's everyday life and how it can be ideologically challenged (Fredriksson 2012(Fredriksson , 2014(Fredriksson , 2015. Piracy can, as we have argued, also establish alternative exchange mechanisms.…”

“…Among other things, this trial contributed strongly to the mobilisation of political "Pirate Parties", first in Sweden and then in many other parts of the world (Burkart 2014;Fredriksson 2014;Fredriksson 2015).…”

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“…Indeed, piracy enforcement is part of a Western Enlightenment narrative which privileges distinctly European ideals of creativity. 86 Nonetheless, pirates can sometimes be redeemed, usually through proof of creative contributions embodied by copyright law's embrace of transformativeness. 87 Embedded in the narrative of redemption, however, is a racial component.…”