Metaphors, law and digital phenomena: the Swedish pirate bay court case

S. Larsson
2013 International Journal of Law and Information Technology  
This article uses conceptual metaphor theory to develop the concept of 'skeumorphs' (reuse of old concepts for new phenomena) in order to analyse the Swedish The Pirate Bay court case. In line with conceptual metaphor theory, which states that abstract thinking is largely metaphorical, the article argues that this is true also for digital phenomena that, thus, are largely understood through metaphors and skeumorphs. Also, when attempting to understand and conceptualize new digital phenomena
more » ... as The Pirate Bay (TPB), law in a digital society is inevitably affected. Hence, new phenomena can be fought over in a 'battle of metaphors', in the TPB court case, for example, evidenced by the arguments of seeing TPB as 'a platform', 'bulletin board', or an 'impure search engine'. This, here argued, was of key relevance for the outcome of the case.
doi:10.1093/ijlit/eat009 fatcat:iq7m4qmambfihf3b667zhmk3ge