Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, 2007. / Adviser: Tailan Chi. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 2001. / Available via the Australian National University Library Electronic Pre and Post Print Repository. Title from title screen (viewed Mar. 28, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of peer-to-peer-based file-sharing by focusing on the discourses about use, agency and motivation involved, and how they interrelate with the infrastructural properties of file-sharing. Peer-to-peer-based file-sharing is here defined as the unrestricted duplication of digitised media content between autonomous end-nodes on the Internet. It has become an extremely popular pastime, largely involving music, film, games and other media which is copied without the permission of the copyright holders. Due to its illegality, the popular understanding of the phenomenon tends to overstate its conflictual elements, framing it within a legalistic 'copyfight'. This is most markedly manifested in the dichotomised image of file-sharers as 'pirates' allegedly opposed to the entertainment industry. The thesis is an attempt to counter this dichotomy by using a more heterodox synthesis of perspectives, aiming to assimilate the phenomenon's complex intermingling of technological, infrastructural, economic and political factors. The geographic context of this study is Sweden, a country characterised by early broadband penetration and subsequently widespread unrestricted file-sharing, paralleled by a lively and well-informed public debate. This gives geographic specificity and further context to the file-sharers' own justificatory discourses, serving to highlight and problematise some principal assumptions about the phenomenon. The thesis thus serves as a geographically contained case study which will have analytical implications outside of its immediate local context, and as an inquiry into two aspects of file-sharer argumentation: the ontological understandings of digital technology and the notion of agency. These, in turn, relate to particular forms of sociality in late modernity. Although the agencies and normative forces involved are innumerable, controversies about agency tend to order themselves in a more comprehensive way, as they are appropriated discursively. The invocation to agency that is found in the justificatory discourses - both in the public debate and among individual respondents - thus allows for a more productive and critically attentive understanding of the phenomenon than previously

This diploma thesis identifies the most important changes in legislation and submitted proposals in the area of copyright between years 2012 and 2013 and in the beginning of 2014 in the Czech Republic, the EU and the USA. These changes are evaluated from a legislative point of view and also from the point of view of a music consumer. For thorough understanding, the thesis contains also an overview of the current Czech legislation of copyright. Furthermore, it evaluates the current situation in a broader context of law, history, technology, culture and consumer behaviour and defines it as opposed to previous periods. It describes the history of music piracy and its current situation and features some of the most important cases of copyright enforcement of the period 2012 to 2014. The thesis contains also a research performed in the Czech Republic and Sweden, which describes past and present habits of music listeners. Following the identification of previous development and current trends, the thesis discovers future development and suggests future solutions to the problem of copyright in music.

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