Social transformations and distribution of pirated media content on the example of video games

Abstract

The article examines the history of the distribution of pirated content and methods of combating it using the example of video games. The ambivalent impact of the phenomenon of piracy on sociocultural processes in societies, especially those that radically changed their social structure at the end of the 20^th – beginning of the 21^st century, is demonstrated. The author proceeds from the fact that piracy arose on the basis of the absence of the so-called “copyright culture” transformed societies, allowed individual economic actors to get rich illegally and quickly, but at the same time acted as a massive display of technical intelligence, a creative impulse to create one’s own video content in these societies and the formation of relevant regional markets, and also contributed to the development of many technical talents currently working on digitalization of socio-economic processes around the world.

According to the examples of piracy described in the article, four main motives for its spread are highlighted, namely: economic, activist, archival and creative motives. As demonstrated in the study, these motives shape relevant social patterns and change over time, as can be seen in the example of creative piracy, which was widespread in the pre-Internet era and has almost disappeared in the modern one. Although in most cases of piracy the main motive is economic, which leads to great losses for copyright holders and authors, not all methods are unequivocally harmful. For example, activist piracy is a form of social protest and allows to demonstrate one’s dissatisfaction with the policy of rights holders through the practice of “wrong” consumption; the archival motive often works in the “gray zone” of copyright and allows preservation of those products, the rights to which were handed over to the rights holders that actually no longer exist.