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Intellectual Property Law Compliance in Europe: Illegal File Sharing and the Role of Social Norms

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Author

Summary, in English

The current study empirically demonstrates the widely discussed gap between copyright law and social norms. Theoretically founded in the sociology of law, the study uses a well-defined concept of norms to quantitatively measure changes in the strength of social norms before and after the implementation of legislation. The ‘IPRED law’ was implemented in Sweden on 1 April 2009, as a result of the EU IPR Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC. It aims at enforcing copyright, as well as other IP rights, when they are violated, especially online. A survey was conducted three months before the IPRED law came into force, and it was repeated six months later. The approximately one thousand respondents between fifteen and twenty-five years-of-age showed, among other things, that although actual file-sharing behaviour had to some extent decreased in frequency, social norms remained unaffected by the law.

Department/s

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

1147-1163

Publication/Series

New Media & Society

Volume

14

Issue

7

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Law and Society

Keywords

  • law and society
  • law
  • IPR enforcement directive
  • internet
  • intellectual property
  • file sharing
  • copyright
  • Enforcement
  • social norms
  • sociology of law

Status

Published

Project

  • Cybernorms. Norm processes in e-communities

Research group

  • Cybernorms

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1461-4448