“Heavy” file sharers’ and “heavy” activists’ values and attitudes toward file sharing and intellectual property rights

• Main Author: Liokaityte, Milda
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation 2012
• Subjects: file sharing; activism; critical political economy; intellectual property rights
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-180356

“Heavy” file sharers’ and “heavy” activists’ values and attitudes toward file sharing and intellectual property rights are analyzed in this thesis, with a focus on the conflict between property owners and non-owners. The purpose of this MA thesis is to investigate the perception of file sharing and intellectual property rights on the Internet. The main research questions is: How do “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists perceive file sharing and intellectual property rights on the Internet?. For answering it, critical political economy and both qualitative and quantitative methods are used. Therefore, the paper consists of two major parts. In the first part, the theoretical framework is introduced. In the second part, empirical research is presented and the theoretical framework is applied to the analysis of the gathered data. Data were collected with the help of a survey. The main results of the study suggest that “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists tend to have left-wing values and a left-wing political agenda behind file sharing, and perceive culture, and information and knowledge as “public goods”. Furthermore, “heavy” file sharers and “heavy” activists tend to contribute to the Net gift economy and share their created content in a way that constitutes an alternative to intellectual property rights, which they see as out-of-date.