The Digital IP Challenge Revisited – File-sharing and Copyright Development in Hungary

Abstract:
The emphasis here is the need to understand both the normative gap and the role of digital architecture in order to display the inherent challenge that copyright meets in a digital society. Consequently, in being a descriptively focused study, this article studies contemporary Hungarian copyright and contrasts this to the findings from a survey with over 500 respondents from the Hungarian file-sharing community. In addition, this sample of Hungarian file-sharers is also compared to the findings from a near global sample of over 96,000 respondents to allow for determining distinctive traits of the Hungarian respondents.



The findings indicate that due to their specific language, Hungarians are more motivated to set up and run their own darknet sites where copyrighted contents – mainly movies and TV-shows – are available not only in original releases, but with Hungarian translations as well. The popularity of darknet sites is similarly due to their special focus on different subject matter and categories. It is also salient that as long as the main darknet torrent-indexing sites are running, their users are not required to subscribe to VPN services and hide themselves via technological measures from the eyes of the right-holders and the police. The key motivation for file-sharers in Hungary seems to be its cost-free nature. As long as the price of copyrighted contents is high compared to the average income, Hungarians will not be motivated to use subscription models or purchase works in hard copies. File-sharing, therefore, seems to represent resistance to the pricing models of works rather than any expression of political opinion (as is the case with many “pirates”).