Pirate politics and digital ethics

As digital technologies have become increasingly pervasive aspects of daily life for (sufficiently affluent) young people, we have seen a growing challenge to both legal and moral norms associated with copyright and intellectual property. On one level, these challenges remain at the informal level of everyday behaviors. But we have also witnessed the growth of more organized elements of a 'movement' seeking a program of reform to overturn what are perceived as outmoded and increasingly insidious copyright and intellectual property regimes. Prominent examples include the Creative Commons movement and the Pirate Party—a formal political party originating in Sweden and now active in at least forty countries. But how closely aligned are these organized platforms for social reform on the one hand, and the ethical discourses of young people faced with the everyday frustrations and temptations of sharing content in digital environments, on the other? To what extent can young people's everyday engagements be harnessed and politicized by these platforms? What, in short, are the prospects for a mass social movement for change (in copyright law and related areas of civil liberty) fueled by the energies of young digital citizens? This paper offers one perspective on these questions. Based on focus group and social media research, it examines young people's responses to the manifestos and platforms of international Pirate Parties. In particular, it examines the relationship between ethical and political dimensions of young people's behaviors as digital citizens. It considers the extent to which new cultural trends around digital media are, in fact, indicative of a new (political) worldview—and constitutive of a new social movement—around cultural and intellectual freedoms.