Online File Sharing
It is apparent that file sharing on the Internet has become an emerging norm of media consumptionespecially among young people. This book provides a critical perspective on this phenomenon, exploring issues related to file sharing, downloading, peer-to-peer networks, piracy, and (not least) policy issues regarding these practices. Andersson Schwarz critically engages with the justificatory discourses of the actual file sharers, using Sweden as a geographic focus. By focusing on the example of Swedenhome to both the Pirate Bay and Spotifyhe provides a unique insight into a mentality that drives both innovation and deviance and accommodates sharing in both its unadulterated and its compliant, business-friendly forms.
Jonas Andersson Schwarz is a Lecturer in the Department of Culture and Communication at Sdertrn University, Sweden.
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Online File Sharing
Innovations in Media Consumption
Jonas Andersson Schwarz
Online File Sharing
Innovations in Media Consumption
Jonas Andersson Schwarz
First published 2014
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jonas Andersson Schwarz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwarz, Jonas Andersson, 1978
Online file sharing: innovations in media consumption / by Jonas Andersson Schwarz.
pages cm (Comedia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Peer-to-peer architectureSocial aspects. 2. Computer file sharing Technological innovations. 3. Social media. I. Title.
TK5105.525.S39 2013
384.3'3dc23
ISBN: 978-0-415-85430-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-74442-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Laura and Suzanna
Contents
I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Sarah Kember and David Morley; all of my other colleagues at the departments of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths and at Sdertrn University College; all of you who have had to bear with me while finishing this work; all of you who managed to distract me; and all of you who kindly let me use the floor space and facilities that were required to do this work. Large parts of this work have been made possible thanks to Swedish research foundation Riksbankens jubileumsfond.
A special thank you goes out to all the worlds file sharersespecially those of you who were so kind to lend me your opinions and viewpoints; not only my formal respondents but all of you who I have in some way or another engaged with over the course of the last decade. I owe you one.
People dont even know were a company. They think were two teenagers in a basement in Sweden.
(Matt Mason, Executive Director of Marketing, BitTorrent, Inc., in Wortham 2012)
The aim of this book is to make for a deeper critical perspective on the current phenomenon of mass-scale file sharing on the Internet. By focusing on the example of Swedenhome to both outlaw file-sharing site The Pirate Bay (TPB) and sanctioned corporate streaming service Spotifyinsights will be offered into both infrastructure and the ways personal inclination is premised on a general disposition that follows from the collective experience of such infrastructures. Sharing has become one of the most telling pastimes of our digital, networked age. However, as digital literacy involves both innovation and deviance, it accommodates sharing and copying in rather divergent ways: Today sharing is manifested in ways that are both uncontrollable and unyielding, as well as compliant and business friendly. One of the things that this book will show is how these two modes of sharing are related.