:: Digital appropriation ::

I'm doing an ethnographic research project for my SOCI 315 course on digital appropriation practices among people under 30. Digital appropriation is my umbrella term for all practices relating to the obtaining, using and recontextualizing of copyrighted digital materials. In even plainer terms, its about how people under 35 go about accessing, downloading, using and re-mixing/re-coding music, movies, software and texts without paying for the materials and without paying heed to copyright issues. I'm hoping to explore how these activists justify their acts, perform their power struggles, get personal meaning and pleasure from the acts and integrate them into their individual identity. I am also on the look out for any whiff of a collective consciousness or identity or social movement among those who are active participants in their digital appropriation practices.

One of the issues I'm already coming up against is locating such people and tapping into any potential communities. By activists, I mean people who engage in the practice deliberately and consciously as an act of defiance against the consumeristic corporatized Western world.

I know of plenty of people lwho are part of a larger and more common, unintegrated group of passive actors. These are people like a retiree I know who do it only in certain areas (i.e. downloading Microsoft software so they don't support Gates' "Dark Realm"powers). For this more common group, though, their minor acts of defiance are not part of their perceived identity and are actually usually at odds with their personalities and public roles.

While I'm interested in the reasons, meanings and pleasures of this latter, larger group, I would prefer to study the former group; the more active participants; those who see digital appropriation as a type of tactic of active resistance against the forces of domination. If I can't find enough of these conscious bricoleurs, I will resort to studying the passive group.

That is where I'm hoping the Internet itself can help. If you are reading this and know of anyone who would fall into the activist actor class I've mentioned, drop me a note or send a link to this blogpost to your contact. Confidentiality and anonymity are assured and I can put you in touch with my professor, if you wish to verify that this is honest, real, ethical and approved research.

Have comments, suggestions, remarks about this research or this type of research? Send those too. I'm always open to a good discussion, conversation or debate.