This book makes a significant contribution to sociolegal analysis and also represents a valuable contribution to conceptual metaphor theory. By utilising the case of copyright in a digital context it explains the role that metaphor plays when the law is dealing with technological change, displaying both ‘conceptual path dependence’, normative implications of reusing already established concepts for new phenomena, as well as what is called non-legislative developments in the law. The analysis draws from conceptual studies of ‘property’ in intellectual property, and shows how the property regime ... More

This book makes a significant contribution to sociolegal analysis and also represents a valuable contribution to conceptual metaphor theory. By utilising the case of copyright in a digital context it explains the role that metaphor plays when the law is dealing with technological change, displaying both ‘conceptual path dependence’, normative implications of reusing already established concepts for new phenomena, as well as what is called non-legislative developments in the law. The analysis draws from conceptual studies of ‘property’ in intellectual property, and shows how the property regime of copyright is the projection of an older regime of control onto a new set of digital social relations. Moreover, through an analysis of the concept of ‘copy’ in copyright as well as the Swedish court case against the founders of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, the author shows the historical and embodied dependence of digital phenomena in law, and the significance of metaphorical framing (for example, was The Pirate Bay a ‘platform’, a ‘storage service’ or a ‘bulletin board’?). The contribution is thereby relevant for how to understand the conceptual and regulatory dynamics of a multitude of contemporary sociodigital phenomena in addition to copyright and file-sharing. On an overarching level, it is here argued that the conceptual battles to define the Internet, as well as the implications of digital development, are significant battles for the role of law in society. There are conceptions in, and underlying, both law and digital architecture—that is, in the code.