Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Abstract

This article approaches the recent debates about copyright and piracy from a cultural and historical perspective, discussing how problems surrounding intellectual property rights (IPR) reflect cultural conflicts that are central to cultural studies. It sets out with a study of how international copyright norms developed in nineteenth-century Europe were implemented in two different national contexts: Sweden and the USA. This historical background shows how copyright has been embedded in the cultural history of Europe and intertwined with the idea of an evolving Western civilization. The examples from the past are thus used to highlight the underlying cultural implications that affect the contemporary discussions. Particular interest is paid to how the historical association between the spread of copyright and the development of civilization affects the understanding of Asian piracy and Western file sharing today, and how a multitude of social movements both in the West and the Third World simultaneously challenge the cultural legitimacy of the current system of IPR. Eventually this is also taken as an example of how law and culture intersect and how the broad, interdisciplinary field of copyright studies that has emerged over the last decade can be seen as an extension of the cultural studies tradition.

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