The outcome of this survey will now be compared with the one we did last year. We also compare our data to other surveys and studies that we have done along with other international studies of similar phenomena. This will make it possible to get some kind of understanding of in what direction the file-sharing community is evolving.

We would like to thank all of you who have helped us by filling out the survey. It really means a lot!

Oh, by the way: To make sure that this is not a one way relation, we are preparing a surprise for you all. We hope to be able to present it in just a little more than a week. Keep your eyes open here, and on The Pirate Bay.

During three days in April last year the Cybernorms Research Group conducted a big survey study called The Research Bay in cooperation with the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. The aim was to explore the demographics of the file-sharing community on site, using the huge user base of The Pirate Bay to grasp what the file-sharing phenomenon (and debate) is all about. The response was tremendous. During the three days we got over 75.000 answers from all parts of the world, which gave us a great insight and an even greater collection of data regarding issues like file-sharing, anonymization, leech/seed ratio and much more.

Now we are doing it again. Three days from today, meaning from Wednesday to Friday this week, we once again are on the front of The Pirate Bay. The survey is very similar to the one we used last year, with minor changes and additions. This to make the data as comparable as possible.

If you want to read more about the Cybernorms Research Group and the researchers connected to it, please do. We also have a blog with posts in Swedish. If you want to read more about our first TPB survey, check the links in this post.

If you have any questions, regarding this study, our precious work or the Cybernorms Research Group in general – do not hesitate to contact us.

Pic: Hansel and Gretel and the issue of traceability

Of particular interest is the response to surveillance by the younger generation. In the current follow-up study, we see that 15% of the respondents use some kind of anonymity service, which is up from 10% in 2009. We predict this to increase even more.

- “If the European Court of Justice opinion leads to an intensified hunt for file sharers, there is evidence that the use of these types of services for anonymity will grow even faster,” says Svensson.

The news were released by TT, and quickly could be reported in the biggest media in Sweden, ranging from SvD, DN, P3, svt.se, tv4.se, to GP, Sydsvenskan, Borås Tidning, and Aftonbladet. This was followed up internationally by sites like Torrentfreak, BBC news, The local and the Australian iTNews, in which I was interviewed, an I confirmed the prediction of that the use of anonymity services will increase in Sweden along with clearer enforcement of not only copyright laws, but also data retention and surveillance.

See also the Cybernorms news in Russian, German, and Italian.

We’ve written about it before, in the 2010 article in the scientific journal Policy and Internet. The article was titled Compliance or Obscurity? Online Anonymity as a Consequence of Fighting Unauthorised File-sharing, and you can find here [pdf].

Picture from the morning plenary. From the left: Håkan Hydén, David Nelken, Reza Banakar and Thomas Mathiesen.

I am preparing for chairing a session that has all the chances of becoming really exciting. Its on law and language, and – of course – including the interest I share on metaphors and conceptions brought in from cognitive linguistics I use in the dissertation thesis i defendead last October.

The first presenters in the session are Karsten Åström and Jan Bröchner that talk about Shifts in the business metaphor in recent Swedish legislation, which are followed by Kjell-Åke Modéer who talks about System – Structure – Fragment: Re-interpretation of legal romanticism in the 21st Century.

After that we hear Sergey Korolev talk about On the paradigm of man in the language paradigm of F de Saussure: some implications in constitutional theory and public law, Michael Phillis talk about Arbitrariness and the role of norms in constitutional theory and public law and Rafal Manko about ‘Principles of social coexistence’ in Polish legal culture: The rise and fall of a general clause and its consequences for legal practices.

It is likely ranging from particular cases located in national law to more complex and abstract overviews of theoretical, historical and conceptual content. Let’s see to what extent I as a chair can see connections between the speakers.

Session abstract:

Law, language and mind: The linguistic, metaphorical and conceptual approach on law and norms

This session puts and emphasis on lingual, metaphorical, symbolic and other fundamental communicative tools role for how law and norms operate, function or are constructed.

Questions that can be asked regards: To what extent is language relevant to study from a norm perspective? To what extent can we as socio-legal scholars learn from disciplines such as cognitive linguistics about how choices of words, metaphors, categorisation, symbols, narratives etc. is not only an embellishment or decoration of legal and normative language but a fundamental part of its construction?

For instance, how important is it to distance oneself from legal language when studying law from a sociology of law or critical perspective? Further, to what extent are these visual surface phenomena somehow connected to normative structures relevant for the depiction of subsurface thought structures and conceptions that may or may not be unaware to us? To what extent can we think outside these conceptual thought structures, and what this mean for a norm-centred approach? To what extent is law and norms embodied, that is, depending on reification and to be spoken about as things for us to be able to analyse, think and understand them?

The name of the conference is The Normative Anatomy of Society. Relations Between Norms and Law in the 21st Century and it deals with “to promote an interdisciplinary debate about the role of norms in our society and their interaction with the law”, and states that “Identifying and questioning these different types of norms is not only a task for sociology of law, but is a field in which multiple disciplines interact. For this reason, the conference aims to promote scientific debate and communication across multiple disciplines.”

The research group on cybernorms chair one or more sessions and we are aiming for…

The aim of this session is to enhance knowledge and discussions around how Internet creates new norms in society. Social norms that spontaneously grow within different net cultures, but also norms in the shape of legislation aiming to regulate and control activities on the internet.

Of interest is that there also is a session that I’m arranging under the name Law, language and mind: The linguistic, metaphorical and conceptual approach on law and norms, where I follow an expanded view of the theoretical track on metaphors and norms from my dissertation from last year. The session focuses

“lingual, metaphorical, symbolic and other fundamental communicative tools role for how law and norms operate, function or are constructed”.

Hope to see you in Lund in April!

NOTE: Deadline for abstracts is on Friday, 10 February.
Register here.

In this third episode we meet Roger Cotterrell, the Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory at Queen Mary, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy. 

This series of lectures is the Cybernorms research group’s contribution to the web-based distance-learning masters program “Sociology of European Law” (SELA) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Sweden.  A new episode will be released once a month featuring a new interview.

The whole series of lectures will be possible to find on iTunesU, using the search term “Cybernorms” in the search field in the upper right corner. Or watch them here on the Cybernorms blog.

Episode 3: Roger Cotterrell (Cybernorms on Sociology of Law)

This approach, however, is in stark contrast to another trend that seeks to disconnect users from Internet access if they violate intellectual property rights. This includes legislation based on the concept of “graduated response”, which imposes a series of penalties on copyright infringers that could lead to suspension of Internet service, such as the so-called “three- strikes-law” in France and the Digital Economy Act 2010 of the United Kingdom, or a recent proposal in Italy.

Conference 25 February 2012
This is a conflict that is not likely to go away. And a Hungarian conference in 25 February focuses the topic:

“Copyright and Human Rights in the Information Age: Conflict or Harmonious Coexistence?“

They invite presenters to submit paper proposal (500-600 words) before January 16, 2012. The conference is at the University of Szeged, in Hungary.

Special attention needs to be paid to the argument that claims that the access to Internet is a human right. This argument envisions protection against technical measures of the rights holders over the Internet, especially against the so-called “graduated response” regimes (according to which one’s Internet connection may ultimately be disconnected). Although the “access to Internet” is not declared to be a (generally and internationally accepted) human right per se, it has gained strong support within the file-sharing community, academia, and international organizations (including the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe). Several national legislative acts (f.e. in Finland and Costa Rica) and judicial decisions (f.e. in France) also support the view that “something has started”.

Will I see you there?

Read more here, or have a look at this Call for papers [pdf].

When talking about piracy the entertainment industry and politicians often use the term “theft.” This is a huge problem according to the Swedish sociologist of law Stefan Larsson. In his thesis “Metaphors and Norms – Understanding Copyright Law in a Digital Society,” he explains that these metaphors are in part keeping the wide gap between people’s norms and the law intact.

Read more here.

Read more about the thesis here, or order it at Lund University, at Adlibris or Bokus.

In this second episode we meet Reza Banakar, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the Department of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of Westminster, London.

This series of lectures is the Cybernorms research group’s contribution to the web-based distance-learning masters program “Sociology of European Law” (SELA) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Sweden.  A new episode will be released once a month featuring a new interview.

The whole series of lectures will be possible to find on iTunesU, using the search term “Cybernorms” in the search field in the upper right corner. Or watch them here on the Cybernorms blog.

Episode 2: Reza Banakar (Cybernorms on Sociology of Law)

Abstract:

This is a compilation thesis in the sociology of law, which analyses copyright law in three steps; the legal norms, the social norms and the underlying conceptions in their metaphorical representation. These three steps assist in answering the overarching question: “How do legal and social norms relate to each other in terms of the conceptions from which they emanate or by which they are constructed, and what is the role played by the explicit metaphors that express these norms?”

The thesis shows how the development of copyright in Europe, when faced with the digital challenge, has been resiliently path dependent (Infosoc, IPRED and more). In the thesis, this legal trend is put in contrast to the measured social norm strength of unauthorised file sharing before and after the implementation of IPRED in Sweden in 2009. The results show that although unauthorised file-sharing decreased to some extent, in line with the manifest purpose of the directive, the social norm that corresponds to copyright remained extremely weak. This is indicative of the undeniably existing gap between the legal and the social norms of copyright. Consequences of this gap are shown in the thesis. This gap concerns how the digitalisation of society not only affects norms, but also our language and mind, which is studied in the metaphors that are constructed from underlying conceptions. All of these are relevant to law and legal analysis, especially in transitional times.

In an attempt to explain parts of why there is such a distinct gap, the thesis proposes a metaphor and conceptions theory to complement the study of norms, by elaborating on findings in cognitive linguistics. It is argued that metaphors in law, and the underlying conceptions they relate to, are of vital importance for understanding contemporary issues in copyright, especially in the transition from regulating an analogue situation to regulating a digital one. The argument here is that how copyright is conceptualised controls how it is regulated and, in this case, leads to lock-in and dependence around certain metaphors that do not function well with the conditions found in a digital society.