Parallel Norms: File‐Sharing and Contemporary Copyright Development in Australia

• Date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Måns Svensson,Marcin De Kaminski,Stefan Larsson,Susan Wnukowska‐Mtonga
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jwip.12018

Parallel Norms: File-Sharing and Contemporary

Copyright Development in Australia

Stefan Larsson

Lund University Internet Institute

Susan Wnukowska-Mtonga

Australian National University, and Lund University Internet Institute

M8

ans Svensson

Lund University Internet Institute

Marcin de Kaminski

Lund University Internet Institute

This article studies contemporary Australian copyright and contrasts this to a large-scale online survey on file sharing

in order to analyse the seemingly parallel and non-compliant legal and social norms that they represent. Furthermore, a

selection of 3,575 Australian respondents to an online survey is compared to a near global group of over 96,000

respondents, allowing determining distinctive traits of the Australian respondents. For example, the latter use offline

methods for sharing and receive rather than distribute content to a higher extent in comparison to the global group of

respondents. Furthermore, Australian respondents also have slightly less predominance of male sharers.

Keywords parallel norms; copyright; file-sharing; Australia

Introduction

What type of a crime is online copyright infringement, often referred to as “online piracy?” How do we

come to terms with it? Given its commonness, a multitude of studies released show how a majority of

primarily the younger generation has file-shared copyright-protected files, or in general does not feel that

there is something wrong with this (cf. Andersson Schwarz and Larsson, 2014; de Kaminski et al.,

2013; Feldman and Nadler, 2006; Gracz, 2013; Karaganis et al., 2012; Larsson, 2013a; Poort and

Leenheer, 2012; Svensson and Larsson, 2012). This particular behaviour, which may be at odds with a

near globally homogenous regulation, is closely connected to digital development and takes part in a

context with strong political and industrial influences. This makes it a challenging problem but also an

interesting one, which, to compare it to Nelken’s account on white-collar crime, “appears to straddle the

crucial boundary between criminal and non-criminal behaviour” (Nelken, 2012, p. 631). The dilemma that

Nelken identifies is that many white-collar crimes are “merely technically criminal” and are not socially

considered on par with ordinary crimes and therefore do not “satisfy the requirements of a sociological

definition of crime” (2012, p. 632). In other words, how the particular crime of illegal file-sharing is

regarded in general, is of great interest here. As discussed below, the social norm among important groups

in society does not follow the legal norm. Perhaps, in the case of illegal file-sharing we need to call the

concept of using the law to draw the line into question. Anyhow, the binary approach on criminal or

non-criminal behaviour clearly needs to be problematized here. Yet again reminded by Nelken’s analysis

of white-collar crime, it is possible that online piracy, like white-collar crime, “illustrates the possibility of

divergence between legal, social, and political definitions of criminality—but in so doing it reminds us of

the artificiality of all definitions of crime” (Nelken, 2012, p. 632).

©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1

The Journal of World Intellectual Property (2014) Vol. 17, no. 1–2, pp. 1–15

doi: 10.1002/jwip.12018