Abstract
This essay examines the role of online media piracy in the shift away from acquisition- and ownership-based models of consumption in favor of access-based models. In this media industry climate, cloud technologies have played an increasingly important role in providing audiences with content on their own terms. Piracy has long served a similar function, but it is taking on aspects of cloud services as well. I investigate how cloud technologies are changing media piracy activities by examining cyberlockers, web-based services that afford consumers both ubiquitous access and ownership of media content. Cyberlocker use for the illegal trade of copyrighted content, I argue, complicates conventional technological, legal, and cultural discourses about media piracy.
Recommended Citation
Marx, Nick
(2013)
"Storage Wars: Clouds, Cyberlockers, and Media Piracy in the Digital Economy,"
The Journal of e-Media Studies: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1938-6060.A.426
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/joems/vol3/iss1/4