Open AccessWinny and the Pirate Bay: A comparative analysis of P2P software usage in Japan and Sweden from a socio-cultural perspective
Author(s) -
Kenya Murayama,
Thomas Taro Lennerfors,
Kiyoshi Murata
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international review of information ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2563-5638
DOI - 10.29173/irie295
Subject(s) - ideology , perspective (graphical) , file sharing , context (archaeology) , politics , subject (documents) , dimension (graph theory) , sociology , sharing economy , political science , law , world wide web , computer science , geography , the internet , mathematics , archaeology , artificial intelligence , pure mathematics
In this paper, we examine the ethico-legal issue of P2P file sharing and copyright infringement in two different countries – Japan and Sweden – to explore the differences in attitude and behaviour towards file sharing from a socio-cultural perspective. We adopt a comparative case study approach focusing on one Japanese case, the Winny case, and a Swedish case, the Pirate Bay case. Whereas similarities in attitudes and behaviour towards file sharing using P2P software between the two countries are found in this study, the Swedish debate on file sharing has been coloured by an ideological and political dimension, which is absent in the Japanese context. This might indicate that Swedes have been more interested in issues of right and wrong, and the creation of political subject of piracy, while the Japanese are more interested in their own individual well being.