Internet Piracy Questionnaire

Project Title: Crack & Release: A Study of Internet Pirate Culture, Community, and Folklore

Researcher:

Benjamin Staple

Department of Folklore

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Project Description:

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study! This research is being conducted for my PhD dissertation, which will investigate the culture of Internet “piracy.” File-sharing has become a global phenomenon with critical social, legal, and economic ramifications, yet few academic studies have documented its cultural dimension.

This project seeks to explore the cultural meanings bound up with the process of sharing sometimes copyrighted material. How do communities of file-sharers perceive themselves? What kind of culture and folklore is generated by such a community? What cultural symbols do members employ to perform their identities at every level, from release groups to downloaders?

Participation & Risks:

Participation in this study means being informally interviewed or answering a series of questions via email about your attitudes toward file-sharing and involvement in release groups and/or torrent communities. Due to current legal and political attention to Internet piracy, this study poses some potential risks: participants may feel uncomfortable discussing certain topics and information they divulge may potentially place them at legal risk. To alleviate this, this project will focus on participants’ privacy:

  • Anonymity: no identifiable information will be collected; I will not ask for your real name or that you sign anything. I will ask for a pseudonym but if you do not wish to provide one, I will assign a random letter as a pseudonym.
  • You do not have to answer all (or even any) questions; only answer questions that you are comfortable with. If you do not wish to answer a question, simply leave it blank.
  • Participants may withdraw from the study at any point, prior to submission of the dissertation, without consequences. Any information collected will be destroyed upon withdrawal.
  • Agreeing to participate indicates that you are at least nineteen (19) years of age.

As required by Memorial University policy on Integrity and Scholarly Research (Section 1.3), data gathered from this study will be stored for a minimum of five years in a secure location known only to the researcher. Digital data will be encrypted on a password-protected drive on a clean and dedicated machine behind a firewall. Participants’ pseudonyms/screen names will be stored separately from the rest of the collected data.

If you have provided an email address, you will receive a digital copy of the dissertation when complete. Thank you again for participating!

Contacts:

Benjamin Staple (Researcher)

Department of Folklore

Email:

Dr. Holly Everett (Supervisor)

Department of Folklore

The proposal for this research has been reviewed by the Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research and found to be in compliance with Memorial University’s ethics policy. If you have ethical concerns about the research (such as the way you have been treated or your rights as a participant), you may contact the Chairperson of the ICEHR at or by telephone at 709-864-2861.

Internet Piracy Questionnaire

Thank you for agreeing to participate! This questionnaire contains a series of questions regarding your personal experience with file-sharing. It has been left in .docx (MS Word) format for flexibility of answering: feel free to type answers directly in the document or copy and paste the questions and answers into an email – whatever you are most comfortable with.

NOTE: When you have finished the questionnaire, please email your answers to me at

1. How should I refer to you? (i.e.: name, pseudonym, screen name/handle, etc.)

2. How old are you?

3. What is your sex and/or gender?

4. In which country do you live?

5. When did you first start file-sharing?

6. Do you identity with the label “pirate”? Why or why not?

7. If not, what do you call what you do? (e.g.: file-sharing, etc.)

8. Why do you “pirate”?

9. What kinds of things do you download?

10. What kinds of things do you upload?

11. What does file-sharing/piracy mean to you?

12. How often do you download or upload files?

13. Do you consider pirating to be hacking?

14. How concerned are you about the legality of file-sharing in your country?

15. How concerned are you about Internet privacy?

16. Do you identify with any historical sea pirates or related symbolism? (i.e.: Blackbeard, Capt. Kidd, Henry Avery, William Dampier, etc.)

17. Do you see Internet piracy as related to 18th C. sea piracy?

18. Which torrent communities do you frequent?

19. Do you participate in the community?

20. Is it important for torrent sites to have a sense of community?

21. Would you be interested in participating in a follow-up interview?

22. Do you want a digital copy of the dissertation to be emailed to you upon completion? If so, please leave an email address here.

Thank you for filling out this questionnaire! Please email answers to me at

If you are interested in learning more about the project, or have any comments or concerns, feel free to contact me at the above address!