The Digital IP Challenge Revisited – File-sharing and Copyright Development in Hungary (original) (raw)
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Piracy Cultures| P2P and Cinematographic Movie Distribution in Hungary
International Journal of Communication, 2012
This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the failure of traditional cultural markets to efficiently supply the demand in the online environment. Its findings are based on tracking the traffic of movies on three Hungarian P2P networks. This dataset is then matched with cinematic distribution data of the films tracked in P2P transactions. Central to our analysis is the assessment of two piracy paradigms: substitution and shortage, that is, whether pirated content is available through legal or only illegal channels. Shortage-driven downloaders are found to outnumber those downloading only current theater releases. Nonetheless, the supply of films available for downloading is more affected by parameters of cinematic distribution than it is by box office success. Therefore, part of the sales effort directly contributes to propping up piracy.
A Reader on International Media Piracy
2015
The concept of 'property' is inherently tangled in contradictions and disorders, especially within Information Capitalism where ideas and culture have to be restricted to make a profit, and shared in order to innovate. Marking out property as 'private' and 'profitable' means that it has to be separated from the social complex of its origin, so that this origin is both obscured and marked by the prospect of violence and theft. As David Hume and Pierre Joseph Proudhon suggest property is driven by imagination, metaphor, power, its contribution to symbolic identity, and throughout, by conflict over originality and copying. In Information Capitalism, the tools of 'knowledge' workers are the tools by which their creativity is appropriated, captured and displayed, and their access to property is acquired or retained for the uncertain future. In this situation the boundaries between property and piracy become even more ambiguous. This situation is explored through considering the social formations and activities around peer to peer file-sharing, and the court case involving The Pirate Bay, in which the roles of metaphor and the tension between property, survival and theft are clearly displayed.
This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the failure of traditional cultural markets to efficiently supply the demand in the online environment. Its findings are based on tracking the traffic of movies on three Hungarian P2P networks. This dataset is then matched with cinematic distribution data of the films tracked in P2P transactions. Central to our analysis is the assessment of two piracy paradigms: substitution and shortage, that is, whether pirated content is available through legal or only illegal channels. Shortage-driven downloaders are found to outnumber those downloading only current theater releases. Nonetheless, the supply of films available for downloading is more affected by parameters of cinematic distribution than it is by box office success. Therefore, part of the sales effort directly contributes to propping up piracy.
Downloading Communism: File Sharing as Samizdat in Ukraine
Peer-to-peer systems allow the seamless sharing of digital materials between strangers who may live in different countries or different continents. As networks such as Kazaa and Gnutella shuffle files effortlessly over the Internet, national boundaries are visible only to those who bother to look up the IP addresses of the machines involved. In the six years since the debut of Napster, a huge volume of legal, popular and scholarly attention has been paid to peer-to-peer file sharing. But despite the inherently global nature of these networks, very little of this attention has been devoted to use of these networks outside North America and Western Europe. I will explore the cultural meanings of file sharing in Ukraine. Ukraine, the second most populous of the former Soviet republics, had been named as one of the ten “priority countries” with “unacceptable piracy rates.” IFPI and other industry and governmental bodies present piracy in straightforward terms as a crime, and emphasize links between music piracy and violent organized crime. The international struggle against piracy is seen as a straightforward matter of building a strong legal framework in developing countries and then making sure that local authorities enforce these laws. They assume that national development follows linear path from the lawless frontier of unchecked piracy to the well policed copyright regime evidenced in the United States. In contrast, my argument is that file-sharing practices in Ukraine reflect distinctive features of its cultural heritage. They are not simply the result of a primitive stage of legal development. Until 1991, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The USSR did not recognize the concept of intellectual property, particularly as it related to foreign and scientific works. For example, generations of Soviet children grew up reading a popular story by Russian writer Aleksander Volkov. It told of a little girl from Kansas who was transported by a tornado with her dog Totoshka on a trip to visit a wizard. Even today, few realize the work is a translation. Internally, however, Xerox machines were banned, and as dissident culture developed from the 1960s onward the illicit reproduction of unsanctioned material was seen as an heroic act of resistance. Manuscripts were photographed, retyped or copied long hand and passed from person to person in a practice known as samizdat. This was punishable by long terms in prison labor camps. Many Ukrainians continue to associate the unrestricted sharing of media materials with freedom, and attempts to restrict the technologies of information exchange with Soviet era repression. Filesharing enthusiasts have appropriated the samizdat tradition to present themselves as members of an underground movement fighting “the rulers of the world corporations” and even a way to realize aspects of the communist utopia once promised to them. Kiev is well known for its street markets in which pirated videos, music and software are sold openly. With the rapid profusion of high speed internet access in Ukraine these materials can now be shared world wide. A global network requires global copyright enforcement. But while peer-to-peer networks provides a seamless technical mechanism for file transfer across national borders, they does nothing to give users on different sides of those borders a shared understanding of the transaction. To some Ukrainians, efforts to crack down on peer to peer networks appear less like the reasonable application of widely agreed principles of intellectual property and more as an act of imperialist hegemony. Changing that perception will be quite a challenge.
Despite being firmly established in the cultural and political fields, the purely economic perspective centered on calculating any potential loss caused by file sharing has the great disadvantage of limiting itself to underlining the greater convenience in copying cultural works offered by the Internet when compared to previous analogue technologies. From this perspective, sharing is seen as a market failure rather than a fundamental dimension of culture that in fact it is (Aigrain 2011). While most empirical studies on this subject find a negative relationship between file sharing and media sales (Smith and Telang 2012), the theoretical literature suggests that the unauthorized copying of copyrighted works can not only help increase rights holder profits but also improve social welfare (Grassmuck 2010). At the same time, due to inherent weaknesses in the data publicly available as well as in the methodologies used in its collection, this negative relationship can conceal more than it reveals (Dejean 2009). On the other hand, the excessive emphasis of the public debate on whether file sharing of copyrighted works harms or benefits the culture industries and to what extent means that the contributions coming from the field of economics are of limited usefulness when it comes to determining measures that take into account both user welfare and the long-term sustainability of cultural production (in terms of the supply of new creative works), without neglecting the financial and social costs that copyright enforcement within a context of digital abundance entails (Handke 2012). Hence the importance, in terms of public policies, of taking into consideration not only the relationship between sales and unauthorized copies but also the users' real behavior, as well as their motives for downloading digital files of copyrighted works without the necessary authorization (Watson, Zizzo and Fleming 2014). Building on a online survey with a self-selected sample of 301 respondents of Portuguese and Brazilian nationality as well as on a set of 16 online interviews subsequently arranged with some of these individuals, this presentation aims to drawn a more accurate picture not only of the level of awareness of Portuguese and Brazilian Internet users concerning the unlawful or lawful nature of the content downloaded and/or shared by them, but also of the true motives and rationales of those who identify as file-sharers: - What rationales do they use for justifying the downloading of copyrighted content? - What is their opinion regarding the consequences of their sharing habits in the lives of creators, publishers and the future of cultural creativity in general? - What do they think of the enforcement measures proposed by copyright industries that have been adopted by several national states? - What solutions and business models do they propose to businesses and trade associations representing rights holders?
The culture of content consumption and problems of media piracy in digital age: Ukrainian experience
AbSTRACT Intercultural character of communications exposed many problems of media industry, including heteroge neous cultural level of media consumption and legal culture in general. The globalization of media causes them to revise the existing business models and to develop new opportunities offered by the digitalization of media environment. Ukrainian media market on Internet is developing steadily. However, one of the major constraints is widespread media piracy. The existing regulatory framework is not ready to oppose it. In this study, we examine Ukrainian media market on the Internet, outline the existing regulatory framework, analyze the legislative and community initiatives related to countering the uncontrolled spread of media content, as well as identify the factors influencing the situation.
Intellectual Property and the Cultures of BitTorrent Communities
In Technics and Time, 1, Bernard Stiegler (1998) challenged the prevalent philosophical distinction between tekhnē and ēpistēmē, arguing that humans are fundamentally technical beings. According to Stiegler, the industrialization of civilization led to a disequilibrium in the evolution of culture and the evolution of technics, with technics evolving more quickly than culture. Stiegler's discussions of technics, culture, time, and memory provide a useful theoretical framework for understanding some of the cultural implications of copyright issues, which are often viewed in terms of economics, legality, and/or ethics. In this article, I focus on the intellectual property debate as it pertains to peer-to-peer networks and the music industry. Drawing from Technics and Time, I theoretically frame these issues as a problem of temporality, memory, and a disconnect in the evolution of culture and technology. I then use small-scale/observational ethnographic analysis to examine a private torrent community to consider how torrent communities are cultural phenomena, the implications of this assumption, and how these considerations might inform or extend existing approaches to issues of intellectual property. More broadly, I ask, what are the affordances of thinking about these economic, legal, and political issues from a cultural framework?
Development of Hungarian Copyright Law
2014
The present monograph has set the aim of providing the presentation and analysis of the development of Hungarian copyright law from the beginnings in the 19th c. to currently effective inland and Union regulations. In view of the growing importance of this field of law, its analysis in an independent monograph is justified by the fact that-although several commentaries and text books as well as studies focusing on certain specific fields have been published recently-a work giving a full-scope and overall presentation and analysis of the history of the development of Hungarian copyright law has not been issued up to now. In terms of its structure the work can be divided into two larger parts. The first part focuses on the history of the evolution and regulation of Hungarian copyright law from the age of the Enlightenment to the 20th century, against the backdrop of European development and regulation, and compares domestic and foreign lawmaking. In this part, special attention has been paid to Ferenc Toldy's and Bertalan Szemere's copyright law bills, and a separate chapter discusses the debate of the Hungarian Lawyers' Society held in 1906, which affected the fundaments of the regulation of copyright law, and Elemér Balás P.'s reform proposals. The analysis of this scientific rather than codification history background is meant to present the reform proposals pointing forward in Hungarian copyright law and getting this field of law close to European standards and their relation to effective regulations of relevant periods. The second much lengthier part explores the history of the development of specific institutions of copyright law in the mirror of our laws, that is, Act XVI of 1884, Act LIV of 1921, Act III of 1969 and Act LXXVI of 1999. As part of that, we shall discuss the basic dogmatical pillars of copyright law, delimitation of moral and economic rights and their increasingly clear separation in specific laws, limitations of copyright law and use contracts. After that, relevant genres regulated separately in specific laws will be addressed one by one, setting out from genres that traditionally fall within the scope of copyright law such as literary, dramatic and musical works, arriving at regulation of issues arising from technological development, such as software related copyright law issues. This part will cover the definition of infringement of copyright as set out in specific laws, regulation of their legal consequences and description of prevailing order of procedure related thereto. Finally, tendencies in the development of effective copyright law will be addressed, with special regard to recent and expected effects of Community law. 1 Tamás Nótári 1 Mauscript finished on April 11, 2012. I. Introduction Copyright is the author's or his legal successor's exclusive right over some intellectual product that falls within the scope of literature or art. The long process of the evolution of copyright protection has been influenced by the joint impact of three factors. One of them was the invention of the technology of printing of books, which can be called the physical side, or technical or material circumstance, because the appearance of the possibility of reproduction emphasised-through saleability of intellectual properties-the necessity of protecting personal and intellectual interests. 2 The other factor is a circumstance in the history of ideas: the appearance of individualism. Works of art of the Middle Ages were characterised by anonymity, however, from the Renaissance the subjective element revived, man became an intellectual individual and recognised himself as such. Artists strove for survival and recognition of their name-this change resulted in the subjective side. The third factor, a characteristic of the past two centuries, is the social need for men to become the owner of their intellectual products. This can be considered the consumer side. As demand for intellectual works grew, the necessity of property protection, in addition to intellectual appreciation, came to the front. It was no longer all the same if the profit arising from the work of art landed in the hands of the party entitled to it or an unauthorised person. One of the primary aims of the regulation of copyright is to encourage creation of intellectual works; it is in this spirit that it acknowledges moral and economic rights for the author's benefit, and thereby advances appreciation, protection of values of national, European and universal culture. At the same time, regulation of copyright law shall create and maintain the critical balance of private and public interest. There is a need for balance between the interests of authors and other right owners as well as users and the general public. Copyright legislation must satisfy lawful needs of education, general education, scientific research and free access to information. Legal regulation must keep up with technological development and must arrange for institutional and procedural conditions of extensive, efficient enforcement of entitlements too. Copyright is a partial field of private law; it constitutes security for the legal protection of intellectual products. It provides protection for artistic activity-which creates literary, musical, fine arts, applied arts, applied graphical, photo art, dance art and so-called secondary works (adaptations, translations)-performing arts activities and activities akin to author's creative work. Creators are entitled, on the one hand, to moral rights, which are related to making works public, integrity of the work, exclusivity of use of name and title, and, on the other hand, to economic rights, which apply primarily to author's fee, distribution, reproduction, any form of use of the work. Author's economic rights can be transferred; after the author's death heirs will be entitled to moral rights related to the work for a defined period. Prejudicing any of the rights the author is entitled to constitutes infringement of copyright (usurpation) and involves civil and criminal law sanctions. Consequently, acknowledgement of intellectual and artistic performance was manifested in the initial obscure legal awareness of this development. The State included the exposition of this legal awareness in its tasks only in the Middle Ages, after printing of books had spread since the new form of disseminating thoughts was of general significance and brought along certain risks. The first protection and limitation of author's rights began with princes' privilege right, which, however, did not extend beyond granting the printing of author's works and prohibition of reprints, and protected and restricted printing of books only. specific fields of civil law put on the agenda, including norms to regulate intellectual works. In recodification of intellectual works the first great steps were taken in 1969. Copyright protection is a legal relation of exclusive character, absolute structure. It follows from this that only the obligee of this legal relation-the author, co-author, author's legal successor (right owner)-is a determined person; anybody apart from the author whose obligation has a negative content can be in the obligor's position; he must respect the author's legally protected interests, the relation to his work and must refrain from disturbing it. There is no need for any authority's proceedings, registration for creating copyright protection. This is justified by the role of the subjective aspects of the work, the individual/original character as fundamental criterion, contrary, for example, to the objective character of technical works. Compared to it, copyright protection arises simultaneously with the creation of the work; in case of disputes the court can, as matter of fact, declare that the author of the given work is not the person who was thought to be or who declared himself as such but somebody else. The content of the author's legal relation is made up by the rights the obligee (copyright owner) is entitled to and the obligations he is bound by. The author is entitled to moral rights and economic rights. It is disputed in theory whether these should be considered independent civic rights or partial rights of a uniform author's civic right. In Hungarian jurisprudence the concept of uniform author's civic right prevails; this is supported also by the inseparable relation of moral rights and economic interests, the appearance of the given titles as different aspects of the same title. The essence of copyright is that the user does not get the right of exclusive use of the work directly from the State; instead, he needs to obtain it under private law contract from the author, who is solely entitled to sell his work on the strength of the law. Because of that it was obvious to include the absolute rights on the work in the concept of property, which, on the one hand, made it possible to market them, and, on the other hand, ensured exclusivity of disposal over the work by virtue of traditionally accepted title. The concept of literary and artistic property, however, did not pay regard to the author's personal interests in his work or his right to take action against distortions of the work or to claim authorship or plagiarism. And competing users were against the possibility of creating hereditary market monopoly on the work based on property, as earlier at the time of privileges. However, temporal restriction of intellectual property was in conflict with the essence of the private law property concept. This way, from the outset, ownership qualification of copyright was disputed in terms of both its content and form of exercise. Copyright is the author's licence to his thought expressed externally, usually by punctuation marks, picture representation, words or music, which can be considered a work. The essence of this licence is that solely the author has the right to make public, publish, duplicate/reproduce, present, perform or...