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17 J. World Intell. Prop. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/jwip17 and id is 1 raw text is: The Journa of World Inte lectua Property (2014) Vol. 17, no. 1-2, pp. 1-15 doi: 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 Mans 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 ofwhite-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). C 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1

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