Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young web cultures
I was on an afternoon session at the law faculty in Lund yesterday and presented the Cybernorms project. I had earlier told two of my English-speaking colleagues that I would present in English, in opposition to the rest of the presenters that I figured would present in Swedish. But when I finally got there, a bit underprepared, seeing the stern looking crowd I took cover in my mother tongue.
An apology is in place. The following post should be seen as that (please forgive my cowardice, Julija and Lucas! Now let me correct my error). In addition to this, the project hasn’t been good at giving descriptions of the project for the non-Swedish speaking. This is a continuation of what we have written here.
The reason I was presenting at all was that we as Department in Sociologist of Law had been invited by the Law faculty in order to get to know each others’ research a bit closer. We all share the same research objective in terms of that law is an important part of our research, may it be in the field of genetically modified crop and its application process, environmental law, criminal gangs cases, involuntary care or online norms and for instance copyright.
The “cybernorms” project
This project, that runs this blog, translates to something like Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young web cultures. It is administratively placed at Lund University and the department of sociology of law, and was started by Dr Måns Svensson, Stefan Larsson (me) and Professor Håkan Hydén, with the official starting date 1 May 2009. This site was however put up in March 2009 and we did a survey on file sharing norms already in January/February the same year. Partly because it was in line with my PhD thesis theme and we figured that we might as well get started as fast as possible. Måns and Håkan were (and is) supervising my PhD research (a couple of few more months left).
When sketching the research project we contacted The Pirate Bay, the BitTorrent tracker that was convicted last year (the men behind it), since we figured that if we are to understand the new practices we need to discuss and receive ideas with people have a good view and insights in the details of the technology-related behaviour. We received attention for this when we later received funding for the project from KK-stiftelsen as one of 9 projects in a pretty grand (SEK 35 millions, about 3.5 million Euro) research program on “young web cultures”. These contacts lead to Marcin de Kaminski, a competent voice in the debate who has become a part of the project.
The project receives funding from KK-stiftelsen from 1 May 2009 until last of April 2013. And the four-year-project is soon to develop from focusing illegal file sharing and its applicable legal norms to also include research regarding the use of pictures online as well as gaming for monetary reasons, likely focusing online poker and its normative structures (and issues).
The first survey we did last year we released as a report also containing an outline of a European legal trend contrasting the social norms of file sharing. Måns and I wrote it and called it Social Norms and Intellectual Property – Online norms and the European legal development and is downloadable from the link.
The second survey and the comparison to the first as well as the very interesting analysis of the effects of the implementation of the IPR enforcement directive in Swedish law, generally called ”the IPRED-law” is under preparation in an article. We have released a few preliminary results on the blog, and you can find our statements in national press when the IPRED-law celebrated its first year in force.
We will perform interviews with 9th grade students in the schools of Lund, starting this fall, in order to get a good understanding of how what place the internet has for these digital natives, so to speak. This will be related to all the three areas of interest in this project, which together hopefully will unlock questions that not merely relates to simplistic issues of each case.
The overarching question regards the creation of social norms in young web cultures and their relation to legal norms, that sort of forms the traditional system the this new practices are born into, often in contrast and conflict.
We have a collaboration with ERICSSON, the company that builds infrastructure for mobile traffic data, and have discussed how we can exchange ideas and information relevant for both parts. One track has lead to a possible offspring project we only briefly mentioned before regarding access to internet for children in India, which we want to use as a means to strengthen child rights, via the educational environment. We also discussing with other partners for scientific collaboration and will release it as soon as it finds a more permanent shape.
So, Julija and Lucas, I hope this can be accepted as an apology for not presenting in English yesterday and also work as a decent presentation for anyone interested in the project that does not speak Swedish. A few international traces can be found online, though: When we released figures on uses of anonymity services among the 15-25-year-olds it spread to blogs in English, English, Hungarian, Spanish and Polish.
And a way to read the blog in English, or something with similarities to English, and perhaps as a last resport, is to use a translator in this way, where “cybernorms” is translated to “cyber standards”. Of course, don’t trust the exact formulations, but one might get the overall picture of what’s written. And if you are not satisfied with that, you can smurfalize it all and for instance find out that the new copyright proposal doesn’t “smurf much difference”.
Kommentarer
6 kommentarer to “Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young web cultures”
Lämna gärna en kommentar!
Cybernorms.net- Conference on norms in April 6 February 2012There is a conference coming up 24-25 April at Lund University in Sweden. If you are academically into norms from any perspective, you should probably check it out. The name of the conference is The Normative Anatomy of Society. Relations Between Norms and Law in the 21st Century and it deals with “to promote an […]
- Cybernorms featuring Roger Cotterrell 15 January 2012Cybernorms.net at Lund University proudly presents a series of lectures on Sociology of Law hosted on iTunesU. The series display interviews with some of the worlds most prominent scholars in the field today. Håkan Hydén, professor at the sociology of law department, Lund university, has traveled around Europe in this first season, talking to famous sociolog […]
- Hungarian conference on Human rights v. Copyright in Feb 2012 10 December 2011We have during the last few years heard arguments for treating internet access with a rights-based approach, and we have seen national legislative examples of it (i.e. Finland, Costa Rica). That the internet and access to it, means so much for so many in terms of how we lead our lives, education, information, banking etc, […]
- Copyright and metaphors 5 November 2011Don’t miss the TorrentFreak article on my PhD thesis Metaphors and Norms – Understanding copyright law in a digital society (download thesis here [pdf]). TorrentFreak writes: When talking about piracy the entertainment industry and politicians often use the term “theft.” This is a huge problem according to the Swedish sociologist of law Stefan Larsson. In [. […]
- Cybernorms featuring Reza Banakar 4 November 2011Cybernorms.net at Lund University proudly presents a series of lectures on Sociology of Law hosted on iTunesU. The series display interviews with some of the worlds most prominent scholars in the field today. Håkan Hydén, professor at the sociology of law department, Lund university, has traveled around Europe in this first season, talking to famous sociolog […]
- Conference on norms in April 6 February 2012
Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young web cultures …: I was on an afternoon session at the law … http://tinyurl.com/y3uacov
Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young net cultures (info in English!): http://is.gd/bsWZq
Tydlig engelsk genomgång! RT @ cybernormer Cybernorms – processes of norm creation in young net cultures http://is.gd/bsWZq
Hej Stephan!
Well, an appology is deffinitely accepted
From my side I should tell that I should learn Swedish faster!
Regarding the “cybernorms” project – it sounds really interesting and relevant. Somewhow I’m thinking now about file sharing and ‘irreclaimable borrowing’ (stealing would be too strong word here although I wrote it at first…). Peope usually give back things because it’s ‘right’ to do that (and ‘wrong’ not to return things), it’s a norm. Could file sharing be treated through the value concept as well? It’s a rhetorical question of course
Julija
,
Hej Stefan,
many thanks for the post and the detailed info.
Sure that I accept your excuses, actually I think we should apologize instead for not being able to understand Swedish yet…
It is very easy to realize that the Cybernorms Project is of great interest, not only for socio-legal scholars as the broad network of partners suggests, and definetely not only for Swedish speakers!
I like the way you prefer to talk about “young web cultures” in the plural. I am particularly concerned with the roles played by the “spaces of places” (in Castells’s terms) on the processes of norm creation in the “spaces of flows”. In a near future the project could perhaps be expanded to embrace the relationship between these territorial dimensions.
The research team seems to be in the right track and since I am curious to know about further findings I will keep following the blog!
Vi ses, Lucas
I am having a diffocuulr time reaidng cbyrenoremrse in Firewfox9.4, just thought I would let oyu know?