created by oto18 on 28/01/2025 at 12:33 UTC
13 upvotes, 14 top-level comments (showing 14)
I am currently working on my dissertation for my Media degree and my topic is on digital piracy. I am looking for case studies regarding the benefits of digital piracy in three areas; academic, music and visual media. So far I have a good amount of research for academic and music piracy but I am struggling to find cases of visual media piracy. I was wondering if anyone had any interesting cases that would apply here.
To explain, for example, with academic piracy I'm looking at Sci-Hub and academic knowledge in the Global South. For visual media I was thinking along the lines of how Akira brought anime to the West (this wasn't due to digital piracy from what I've read but if anyone knows otherwise I'd love to hear about it!) Any cases or examples you can think of would be a massive help and I'm happy to clarify anything in the comments :)
Comment by Snoo7273 at 28/01/2025 at 14:32 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Maybe not 100% what you're looking for but here is an article where an HBO executive is mildly pro piracy in regards to Game of Thrones.
Comment by Pleonastic at 28/01/2025 at 12:51 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Very interesting topic. I'll get back to you, but off the top of my mind, there was some discussion about piracy due to the way in which the short film Innocence of Muslims was promoted (and subsequently removed from YouTube).
Comment by doctor_hyphen at 28/01/2025 at 12:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A lot of the scholarship on anime piracy in the west can be found if you do a Google Scholar search for “fan translation anime”
Comment by ChaMuir at 28/01/2025 at 13:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I recall one of the actors from Breaking Bad attributing the shows success in later seasons to the fact that many people found out about it through pirating.
Comment by doctor_hyphen at 28/01/2025 at 12:54 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Comment by paulderev at 28/01/2025 at 14:41 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
i don’t have a source for you on this but I distinctly remember family guy after it got cancelled that the pirating of it on limewire definitely got the show organic attention again to get fox to pick it back up
Comment by fredmerz at 28/01/2025 at 13:35 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There is a portion of the recent book on IP “Who Owns This Sentence?” that discusses historical examples of IP infringement (not necessarily piracy) helping launch careers and industries. Might be helpful at least for a brainstorming.
Comment by glass4food at 28/01/2025 at 17:24 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I don’t necessarily have sources but and idea that came to mind for me was pirated videos of musicals or bootlegs available on YouTube/other sources. Sounds like a very interesting topic and would love to read your dissertation when it’s complete, good luck!
Comment by Lower_Intention3033 at 29/01/2025 at 02:43 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I had a teacher then who was in a band. He used to burn unofficial copies of their album and give it to those selling pirated CDs just to get the music around. This was obviously before the internet.
Comment by shhhhhhhhhh at 29/01/2025 at 14:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Gangs of Wasseypur - A critically acclaimed Bollywood movie.
Comment by Ok-Mushroom634 at 30/01/2025 at 00:10 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
project sounds cool. good luck!
Comment by robbo1337 at 31/01/2025 at 20:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There’s an old article kicking about by Mark Pesce on hyperdistribution where he claimed that Battlestar Galactica BitTorrent killed TV. Think it was on MindJack?
Edit: the article from 2005 https://mindjack.com/feature/swarm051305.html
Comment by robbo1337 at 31/01/2025 at 20:23 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Have you read the Balazs Bodo paper from 2013 which deals with the private film torrent site, Karagara (still going to this day)? Might be an adjacent interst area
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2261679
There are some interesting points about community being important to maintaining and policing certain types of non-mainstream film distribution
Comment by jeto2112 at 01/02/2025 at 09:05 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Mystery Science Theater 3000 had on screen text at the end of early episodes that said "Keep circulating the tapes!", referring to the practice of taping episodes from tv and sending sharing them around the fandom community. It was a time when a show went so far as to promote piracy and this is credited, within the fandom at least, with the show's longevity and cult status. As a young nerd without cable, I did indeed get friends who were fans to tape them and share them with me.