<p>This thesis contributes to the knowledge of how computer-mediated communication and information sharing works in large groups and networks. In more detail, the research question put forward is: in large sharing networks, what concerns do end-users have regarding to whom to provide material? A theoretical framework of gift-giving was applied to identify, label and classify qualitative end-user concerns with provision. The data collection was performed through online ethnographical research methods in two large sharing networks, one music-oriented and one photo-oriented. The methods included forum message elicitation, online interviews, application use and observation. The result of the data collection was a total of 1360 relevant forum messages. A part from this there are also 27 informal interview logs, field notes and samples of user profiles and sharing policies. The qualitative analysis led up to a model of relationships based on the observation that many users experienced conflicts of interest between various groups of receivers and that these conflicts, or social dilemmas, evoked concerns regarding public and non-public provision of material. The groups of potential recipients were often at different relationship levels. The levels ranged from the individual (ego), to the small group of close peers (micro), to a larger network of acquaintances (meso) to the anonymous larger network (macro). It is argued that an important focal point for analysis of cooperation and conflict is situated in the relations between these levels. Deepened studies and analysis also revealed needs to address dynamic recipient groupings, the need to control the level of publicness of both digital material and its metadata (tags, contacts, comments and links to other networks) and that users often refrained from providing material unless they felt able to control its direction. A central conclusion is that public and non-public gifting need to co-emerge in large sharing networks and that non-public gifting might be an important factor for the support of continued provision of goods in sustainable networks and communities.</p>

<p>Titel: Into tomorrow – Constructing scenarios for the record industry in the 21-century.Number of Pages: 54 (55 including enclosures)Author: Erik G AgebergTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Studies DPeriod: Spring semester 2009University: Division of Media and Communication studies, Department ofinformation science, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The aim of this paper is to, through scenario planning methodology,present recommendations in order for record companies to be competitive in the nearfuture. In order to achieve this goal three question where asked. (1) What are the mostcentral problems of the record industry? (2) How can these problems affect the futurein the industry? (3) In what way can record companies’ work to avoid theseproblems? The paper focuses on the Swedish market partly because of the giventimeframe but also because of Sweden’s position in that of file sharing as well astechnological advances. It is also assumed in this paper that the future of music saleswill be concentrated to the Internet.Material/Method: The chosen method for this paper was scenario planning. Anextensive literature study was complemented with interviews of key players involvedin content consumption over the Internet.Main results: A fundamental issue for the future of the music industry is that oflegislation. The outcome of the record industry’s future is almost exclusivelydependent on the way, which the legislation takes. A stricter legislation, whichincludes violations of citizens’ personal integrity, may backfire and result in politicalpirate parties’ becoming members of parliaments. This may in turn result in that theintellectual property laws of the nineteenth century are removed. Suing privatepersons and trackers can result in record companies alienating an entire generation ofmusic consumers. Record companies attempts to retain music as a product may proveto be futile within time, but they can absolutely prolong the period in which it is aproduct. It is nevertheless, not entirely negative for music to become a service. Bybeing a service music can more easily be attached to another service, like an Internetsubscription, or an experience.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>Purpose/Aim: To study how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution of information and culture products and to find a possible ideological explanation for their argumentation.</p><p>Method/Material: I have used a rhetorical analysis to study and describe Piratbyrån´s website, a website that promotes free distribution of information and culture products. I have done so to find out how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution and to find out what ideological foundation their argumentation is based on.</p><p>Main results: The main results of the study show that Piratbyrån uses a variety of rhetorical techniques depending on the subject and purpose of the analyzed text. Their main arguments both promote their own thesis and argue against the copyright industry. The main part of the argumentation is based on logical and factual arguments, but parts of it also rely on an emotional appeal to the reader’s heart in order to persuade. The analysis also showed great similarities between Piratbyrån´s argumentation and the ideology that Siva Vaidhyanathan describes as information anarchy. An ideology that promotes free distribution of information and culture products, that relies on decentralized systems and nonhierarchical structures and is a result of the technological development such as digitalization and peer-to-peer networks.</p><p>Keywords: Rhetoric, technology, file sharing, digitalization, network, ideology, anarchy, oligarchy, copyright, website</p>

Abstract Purpose/Aim: To study how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution of information and culture products and to find a possible ideological explanation for their argumentation. Method/Material: I have used a rhetorical analysis to study and describe Piratbyrån´s website, a website that promotes free distribution of information and culture products. I have done so to find out how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution and to find out what ideological foundation their argumentation is based on. Main results: The main results of the study show that Piratbyrån uses a variety of rhetorical techniques depending on the subject and purpose of the analyzed text. Their main arguments both promote their own thesis and argue against the copyright industry. The main part of the argumentation is based on logical and factual arguments, but parts of it also rely on an emotional appeal to the reader’s heart in order to persuade. The analysis also showed great similarities between Piratbyrån´s argumentation and the ideology that Siva Vaidhyanathan describes as information anarchy. An ideology that promotes free distribution of information and culture products, that relies on decentralized systems and nonhierarchical structures and is a result of the technological development such as digitalization and peer-to-peer networks. Keywords: Rhetoric, technology, file sharing, digitalization, network, ideology, anarchy, oligarchy, copyright, website

Problem: Record companies are facing a downturn in sales of music. This is seen as consequence of the growth of distribution of music through Internet by file sharing networks such as BitTorrent networks. On one side there are record companies who feel threatened of the illegal file sharing, and on the other side file sharing BitTorrent networks has increased dramatically in number of users since they first approached. Some record companies have responded by taking hostile actions towards the BitTorrent networks and their users with lawsuits and penalties for illegal file sharing. Other record companies and artists have joined forces with BitTorrent networks and see them as an advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze if, and how record companies can collaborate with the BitTorrent networks. Method: A hermeneutic inductive approach is used, in combination with qualitative interviews with both record companies and BitTorrent networks. Conclusions: It is argued that record companies can find a way in communicating and cooperating with BitTorrent networks. Instead of adopting hostile approaches and trying to restrict the technologies adopted by end users, companies should open themselves up and accept the current changes initiated and developed by BitTorrent networks. Thus, it was concluded that companies have to concentrate around collaborating with BitTorrent networks rather than fiercely protecting old business models. By opening up to the users, record companies will adopt open innovations approach that is characterized by combining external and internal ideas, as well internal and external paths to market, thus obtaining future technological developments. As for the BitTorrent networks, by going from outlaw to crowdsourcing mode, the networks’ creative solutions can be further harnessed by record companies. Finally, strengthening relationships between customers and music artists can be considered as beneficial for both record companies and BitTorrent networks. Thus, giving opportunities for customers to win special items, tickets for concerts, watch sound check, eat dinner backstage with the group, take pictures, get autographs, watch the show from the side of the stage, etc. can lead to valuable relationship in a long run.

Titel: Into tomorrow – Constructing scenarios for the record industry in the 21-century.Number of Pages: 54 (55 including enclosures)Author: Erik G AgebergTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Studies DPeriod: Spring semester 2009University: Division of Media and Communication studies, Department ofinformation science, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The aim of this paper is to, through scenario planning methodology,present recommendations in order for record companies to be competitive in the nearfuture. In order to achieve this goal three question where asked. (1) What are the mostcentral problems of the record industry? (2) How can these problems affect the futurein the industry? (3) In what way can record companies’ work to avoid theseproblems? The paper focuses on the Swedish market partly because of the giventimeframe but also because of Sweden’s position in that of file sharing as well astechnological advances. It is also assumed in this paper that the future of music saleswill be concentrated to the Internet.Material/Method: The chosen method for this paper was scenario planning. Anextensive literature study was complemented with interviews of key players involvedin content consumption over the Internet.Main results: A fundamental issue for the future of the music industry is that oflegislation. The outcome of the record industry’s future is almost exclusivelydependent on the way, which the legislation takes. A stricter legislation, whichincludes violations of citizens’ personal integrity, may backfire and result in politicalpirate parties’ becoming members of parliaments. This may in turn result in that theintellectual property laws of the nineteenth century are removed. Suing privatepersons and trackers can result in record companies alienating an entire generation ofmusic consumers. Record companies attempts to retain music as a product may proveto be futile within time, but they can absolutely prolong the period in which it is aproduct. It is nevertheless, not entirely negative for music to become a service. Bybeing a service music can more easily be attached to another service, like an Internetsubscription, or an experience.

The rise in the prevalence of the Internet has had a wide range of implications in nearly every industry. Within the music business, the turn of the millennium came with a unique, and difficult, set of challenges. While the majority of academic literature in the area focuses specifically on the aspect of file sharing within the Internet as it negatively impacts sales within the recording sector, this study aims to assess the Internet’s wider impacts on the broader music industry. In the same time that record sales have plummeted, the live music sector has thrived, potentially presenting alternative business models and opportunities. This paper will discuss a variety of recent Internet-related developments including the rise of legal digital distribution, key economic implications, general welfare effects, changes in consumer preference and social phenomena as they relate to both the recording and live entertainment sectors. I employ a time series multiple regression model to evaluate the statistical significance of the relationship between the Internet’s rise and the value of record sales. For the concert industry, I will examine recent trends and descriptive data as they relate to the Internet’s prevalence.

Along with the rise of smart phones, Google announced a mobile platform named Android, having the advantages of open source, free, etc, had become one of the popular mobile development platforms. But there are following restrictions on the file sharing of the smart phones: 1. The File Sharing between mobiles is used frequently, but the APP of the File Sharing in Google play contains user sharing their files on the same LAN, can¡¦t share on the WAN. 2. The cloud storage space has the file sharing strategy on WAN, but doesn¡¦t on LAN. 3. File sharing of mobile devices always hope to be able to share file through one-to-many Push, delivery to the nearby users but the app of the smart phone file sharing don¡¦t have this function. Therefore, this thesis architects a File Sharing platform, which is based on social networks, passing through pub/sub pattern to sharing files.In the File Sharing System, if users are on the same LAN can share files directly. We implement one-to-many file sharing system, so that users can obtain files automatically. If on the WAN, files are delivered by the intermediary server. This System also supports Multimedia streaming, users can play media from Server; need not download files in the local device. This paper use protocol buffer to the communication between devices, compared with the current common XML, JSON and other common file formats, there is a better package rates and privacy, and provides a convenient user interface to share files.

Prior researches in P2P file sharing mostly focus on several topics such as the overlay topology, the content searching, the peer discovery, the sharing fairness, incentive mechanisms, except scheduling algorithms for peer-to-peer collaborative file distribution. The scheduling algorithm specifies how file pieces are distributed among peers. When a peer that has the rarest piece leaves, the other peers probably download the incomplete file in the network. Our algorithm is involved in the lifetime of peers in the P2P networks. We first use the distribution of peer¡¦s lifetime and the demand of each peer to decide which peers send which pieces that are rarities, and then also consider the distribution of peer¡¦s lifetime and the demand of each peer to decide which peers receive these pieces. Our goals are to maximize number of peers which have downloaded an entire file before it leaves, to increase the availability of different file pieces, and to minimize the transmission time of the latest completion. Lastly, we show the comparison of the performances of RPF, MDNF, Lifetime-based RPF, and Lifetime-based MDNF algorithms.

This paper examines the professional role of the music journalist and how it has been affected by the expansion of the Internet. The study aims to examine  the profession's outlook and how professional music journalists are working to reach the public with interesting information, despite the fact that the audience of today often can be first to deliver the news. Through qualitative research interviews with three current music journalists the professional role and its development is examined. Based on theories and previous research on journalism, how the media communicates and its importance to society, what it is to be a music journalist and the spread of digitization and the impact of file sharing the results are analyzed. The conclusions of the study are that it isn’t a profession that is disappearing but rather a profession that is working towards a new future. The wide range of social media and the ability to stream music via the music service Spotify, for example, is expanding the field of music and more music lovers can make their voices heard. The role of the music journalist is no longer to be first with the latest in the music world but to convey information best. / Denna uppsats undersöker musikjournalisternas yrkesroll och hur den har påverkats av internets expansion. Studiens syfte är att ta reda på yrkets framtidsutsikt och hur yrkesverksamma musikjournalister arbetar för att nå ut med intressant information, trots att dagens publik många gånger kan vara först med nyheterna. Genom kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer med tre aktuella musikjournalister undersöks yrkesrollen och dess utveckling. Med utgångspunkt från teorier och tidigare forskning om journalistyrket, hur medier kommunicerar och dess betydelse för samhället, hur det är att vara musikjournalist samt digitaliseringens utbredning och fildelningens konsekvenser analyseras resultatet. Slutsatserna för studien är att det inte är ett yrke som håller på att försvinna utan ett yrke som går mot en ny framtid. Det stora utbudet av sociala medier och möjligheten att lyssna på strömmad musik via exempelvis musiktjänsten Spotify breddar musikområdet och fler musikintresserade kan göra sin röst hörd. Musikjournalisternas roll handlar inte längre om att vara först med det senaste inom musikvärlden utan om att förmedla informationen bäst.