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Access, piracy and culture: the implications of digitalization in Southeastern Europe
Access, piracy and culture:
the implications of digitalization in Southeastern Europe
Jaka Primorac
Krešimir Jurlin
Digitalization has triggered many changes in the last two decades. Prompted by
globalization processes, the innovations in information and communication
technologies (ICT), intertwining with the field of culture and media, have opened a
number of questions in understanding the new nature of distribution, consumption
and production of (cultural) goods and services. With the increased availability of
tools of production and distribution, everybody is able to create, to present their work
more easily and to find their audience. Apart from this, the emergence of “parallel
worlds” based on differentiated and specific taste (diversified demand) appears as
well, as Anderson (2006: 184) noted: “People are re-forming into thousands of
cultural tribes of interest, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace
chatter than by shared interests.” Thus, with the convergence of (tele)communication
and information technologies, new possibilities for interaction are being established.
These possibilities allow the swift flow of symbols across borders that cause (among
other things) processes of hybridization of cultural forms and (local) cultural change.
In this way, new forms of intercultural communication are being developed; new
cultural identities are being (re)created and (re)defined through the impact of cultural
diversity in the digital domain (Švob-Ðokiæ, 2004, 2005, 2006; Cvjetièanin, 2006).
All these changes in digital culture are occurring at such a fast pace that it makes the
implications of the newly established conditions (including questions of privacy and
free speech) difficult to assess – for the users as well as for legislators.
It is evident that, in order to be present in the virtual sphere, one needs to have
access to digital technology and thus, to the content it holds. As Rifkin (2000) has
shown, access to technology, to knowledge, to content, etc., is paramount in today’s
globalized (creative) economy; who has the power to access this becomes crucial.
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