ESF Exploratory Workshop on Consuming the Illegal

ESF Exploratory Workshop on Consuming the Illegal

I have secured funding from the last European Science Foundation’s Exploratory Workshop competition for a workshop on piracy. ‘Consuming the Illegal: Situating Digital Piracy in Everyday Experience’ is planned to take place at The Catholic University of Leuven between Sunday 17th April and Tuesday 19th April, 2011. The workshop will include contributions from Fiona Macmillan, David Wall and Majid Yar, placing internet piracy within a context of research on consumption and everyday practice. Bringing researchers from a range of social science disciplines the workshop aims to develop theoretical and methodological perspectives to examine consumer behaviour, practices and understandings to...

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Desperately Seeking Pirates

Desperately Seeking Pirates

As part of my research on files sharing, downloading and piracy I’m starting to plans a series of interviews. The first batch of these will be with those on the piracy side of of the intellectual property debate. I’m looking for a range of pirates happy to talk to me about their downloading, views of the legality and ethics of file sharing and the everyday nuts and bolts of what they download and how it fits it with their consumption of films, software, music and books in general. So whether you are a casual file sharer or user of...

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CfP: New Technologies and the Changing Landscapes of Leisure

CfP: New Technologies and the Changing Landscapes of Leisure

Call for Submissions for an Edited Collection Chapters exploring the use and impact of new technologies on leisure experiences are sought for a proposed book. Abstracts are requested by 15th October 2010 with a view to publication following successful review and publisher selection. The full call for papers can be viewed and downloaded  from Scibd. Technologies and platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, computer games, streaming media and smartphones, augmented reality services and haptic sensors along with an always-on and ever-connected culture have significantly transformed the Western world spends its leisure time. New technologies have enabled people to amplify and...

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Downloading as Deviance

Downloading as Deviance

Image by Rami ™ via Flickr Posted an update of this on Scribed on Aug 2011.   One of the papers I’m currently working on is ‘Downloading as Deviance: Discourses of immorality, consumer ethics and the practice of internet piracy’. It still needs some polishing but I am keen to get feedback on what I’ve written so far so have been circulating it amongst colleagues. The paper looks at the way internet piracy is framed as theft and therefore immoral and asks how useful really is such an approach? What is to be gained from regarding customers as criminals?...

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The Consumption of Counterfeit Goods: ‘Here be Pirates?’

The Consumption of Counterfeit Goods: ‘Here be Pirates?’

In this paper from the British journal, Sociology, I explore whether it is rally useful to look at the downloaded of copyrighted good such as film and music as subcultral or opositional as some researchers have done. Instead I argue that piracy is much more routine, common and everyday. Abstract Image via Wikipedia Social science, policy and popular discourse around counterfeiting regularly position consumers of counterfeit goods as part of a technological elite or motivated by anti- capitalist or anti-corporate positions. In order to explore this construction and highlight its associated limitations, this paper presents quantitative data collected through...

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Presentation on Open Access publishing in academia

Presentation on Open Access publishing in academia

Last weekend  (16th-18th April) saw the inaugural meeting of the Pirate Parties International. Taking place in Brussels, the event started of with a tour of the European Parliament along with a talk from the Swedish MEP and Pirate Party member, Christian Engström, and a presentation from me. As is so often the case in such situations things didn’t go exactly to plan and I was left without a projector. However, I’m quite please with the look of the slides so I’ve given them a second chance and popped them on Slideshare for the world to see. The presentation is...

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