Should digital files be considered a commons? Copyright infringement in the eyes of lawyers

Jérôme Hergueux () and Dariusz Jemielniak
Additional contact information
Jérôme Hergueux: D-GESS - Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences [ETH Zürich] - ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this article, we draw on a survey conducted with elite upcoming lawyers from all around the world to shed new light on the ethical acceptability of file sharing practices. Although file sharing is typically illegal, our findings show that lawyers overwhelmingly perceive it as an acceptable social practice. The main criterion used by lawyers to decide on the ethical acceptability of file sharing is whether or not the infringer derives any monetary benefits from it. Further, our findings show that lawyers in the public sector (including judiciary and academia) are even more tolerant of online copyright infringement than those in the private sector. Interestingly, our data suggests that this is largely the result of self-selection: lawyers who lean more on the side of broad disclosure and social sharing tend to orient themselves toward the public sector. Implications for the current state of the debate on the reform of copyright law are discussed.

Keywords: Commons; copyright; digital ethics; file sharing; piracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05-31
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Information Society, 2019, 35 (4), pp.198-215. ⟨10.1080/01972243.2019.1616019⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02516797

DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2019.1616019

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().