Специфичният възход на българските интернет мрежи. Технологии, пазари и логиката на онлайн пиратството
The Specific Rise of the Bulgarian Internet Networks. Technologies, Markets, and the Logic of Online Piracy

Summary/Abstract: The analysis is set within the broader field of Internet sociology and focuses on the overlap between the economic, social, and technological structures. It looks into the processes behind the historical rise and transformation of the Internet infrastructure and the market of internet service providers in Bulgaria (1990-2000). It uses the Actor-Network theory and methodology, specifically M. Callon’s Theory of translation, to explore the intermingling between online piracy and the construction of a technological infrastructure for the telecommunication market. The main idea of the research is that the widespread piracy among domestic users structures and determines the direction for the particular technological trajectory that Bulgaria took. The text shows how piracy emerges during market competition and the post-socialist breakdown of the old institutional ties between the numerous economic actors that build an alternative market for access to pirated internet content. The outcome from this is a local infrastructure adapted to the transfer of large amounts of data that peer-to-peer users (p2p) share with each other. Different types of strategies by consumers are differentiated between, as well as the ways they affect the technological transfer and their link to the economic actors/stakeholders/parties that implement the new technologies. For the purpose of the analysis, data has been collected from online discussion forums, where the demand and the supply side meet.

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