How Swedish Filesharers Motivate Their Action

PhD Thesis by Jonas Andersson, see http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6562465/WHOLE%20THESIS_FINAL_new16.pdf

Description

"My thesis is about Swedish file-sharers’ own arguments and motives. I analyze how they justify their habits, and what they refer to. I interviewed Swedish file sharers and analyzed blogs, newspapers, debates and web comments. I placed great emphasis on connecting the arguments to various sociological theories of representation, agency, justification and morality, as well as to the actual technical, economic, historical, demographic and geographical conditions. As the actual p2p protocols (especially BitTorrent protocol) are so central to the drama, the sociologist’s role is to determine: What is BitTorrent? How shall we understand the “nature” of a network, and the way the users themselves constantly invoke this “nature”? Ontology – how reality is described and defined – becomes the crux of the debate." (http://liquidculture.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/summary-of-my-thesis/)