Digital Film Consumption Beyond Legal Frameworks: A New Form of Cinephilia? A Empirical Investigation of Unauthorized Film Access (2001-2012)

Abstract

Frederic Gimello-Mesplomb

This article examines the cinephilia of film downloaders between the end of the Napster era (the first P2P network shut down by US authorities in 2001) and that of MegaUpload, shut down in 2012 by New Zealand authorities. This decade has been characterized by the gradual disappearance of the technological barriers that have long hampered the downloading of large files, in tandem with the spread of ADSL and the rise of streaming1 . Few studies, however, have looked at downloading and streaming from the perspective of the sociology of consumption, considering these content appropriation practices as a means of determining a trend in cinephiles' taste for the cinema object. On the basis of a qualitative survey, we look at the motivations behind downloading and streaming, relating them to the emergence of new cinephilic behaviours ("niche" and "rarity" cinephilias). Today, these indicators converge to suggest that downloading films is a way of appropriating images that has become commonplace, with few differences from other uses of cinephilia consumed on the big screen.

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