P2P Leisure Exchange: Net Banditry and the Policing of Intellectual Property

Abstract

This paper examines P2P (file sharing) culture as a novel leisure form. P2P raises significant issues about the ownership and control of intellectual and artistic property, access and the regulation of leisure choice. The paper examines the efforts of the recording industry to suppress file‐sharing technology. It examines the limitations on this strategy associated with globalized leisure culture. Following the World Leisure and Recreation Association’s ‘Sao Paulo Declaration’ (1998), it is possible to interpret P2P as a leisure form that fosters social inclusion, empowerment and distributive justice. This leaves the recording industry in the awkward position of seeking both to impose limitations on the functionality of computer exchange technology and to regulate participation in a mass popular cultural and leisure form. The culture of down‐loading is located in relation to the tradition of social banditry. Down‐loading is presented as part of much more long‐standing, deeply rooted traditions of leisure practice in which identity formation and resistance to regimes of power are mediated. Net technology and the corresponding supply of intellectual and artistic property on the net is regarded as weakening the orthodox distinction between licit and illicit consumption and leisure. The paper closes by speculating upon the theoretical implications of these social and cultural developments for the study of leisure.