The Cybernorms group at Sweden's Lund University has partnered with The Pirate Bay to "help researchers to better understand habits and norms within the file-sharing community"—and the site has temporarily rechristened itself "The Research Bay" in response.
Cybernorms started in 2009 at Lund as a research project from a PhD student in the Sociology of Law department. The idea was to look at how real-world norms interact with laws concerning file-sharing, and early work in the field came to a stark conclusion.
A 2009 paper (PDF) based on initial Cybernorms research concluded first of all that there are "no social norms that hinder illegal file sharing. The surrounding imposes no moral or normative obstruction for the respondents file sharing of copyrighted content."
Furthermore, the research found that 75 percent of 15-25 year olds had no plans to stop swapping copyrighted files just because it was illegal. "Almost as many state that more stringent legislation will not stop them from downloading," the report concluded. "This reveals a large discrepancy between the viewpoint of copyright legislation and of young people regarding what is right and wrong. File sharers do not believe copyright legislation should interfere with how they use the Internet in their living rooms. If we choose to ignore this discrepancy, we run a clear risk of diminishing younger generations respect for rule of law."
The Cybernorms group now seeks more data on file-sharing behavior through a brief survey linked on The Pirate Bay's front page. It hopes that more data will help it explore "the gap and the distance that today is at risk of emerging between the traditional society’s rules and the social norms that are generated within the framework of young net cultures."
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