Abstract The emergence of P2P technologies has reconfigured the relationship between protest and music by politicizing the modes of music distribution. Protest music has indeed always relied on alternative distribution networks. Still, the ideological significance attributed to open P2P networks and pirate radio channels defines the mode of distribution itself as liberating, regardless of the content that is distributed. If previous music movements have aimed to achieve something outside itself—peace, equality, freedom—then the piracy movement essentially sees the freedom of distribution as a means to its own end. This movement has been countered by a growing range of legal and commercial streaming services controlled by the music industry. At the same time, new technologies have enabled other alternative distribution networks. This chapter discusses the digital radio piracy collective Noisebridge against a long history of media piracy and renegade radio networks to highlight the inherent connection between hacking, piracy, and alternative media distribution.

Patrick Burkart, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture, interviews Dr Igor Vamos, member of The Yes Men and Professor of Art at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, USA. Dr Burkart and Dr Vamos discuss the formative years of experimentation with art and politics which informed Dr Vamos's vision for The Yes Men's environmental activism and the prospects for an ecological politics.

Abstract The “Unite the Right” rally that subsumed Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 will be remembered for its haunting torch-lit rally, massive display of neo-Nazi and white nationalist paraphernalia, bloody riots, and murderous car attack. Despite extensive media coverage, a comprehensive, scholarly, synthetic study of the planning and execution of the Unite the Right (UtR) has yet to emerge. Drawing from a repository of 5,000 primary texts and digital artifacts and using the lens of symbolic interactionism and levels of analysis theory, this study details the event as manifested in three theatres: symbolically mediated, systems-technical, and physical. Three findings are discussed: first, the “event” was centrally organized as a simulacrum of a military campaign; second, the agitational propaganda and information warfare was extensive and designed to publicize, recruit, and terrorize; and third, the city of Charlottesville suffered two cyber-attacks timed for meaningful symbolic interaction with movement actors and public officials. Based on these three findings, the authors offer the term “immersive terrorism” to describe the extended, trans-mediated, multi-theatre nature of the UtR terror campaign.

This article examines the development of hacking and cybersecurity software packages as commodities, based on an international political economy of vendors and clients operating in the interstices of international law. Offensive hacking and defensive cybersecurity tools offer new means for surveillance of critics, journalists, and human rights workers, especially in corrupt or authoritarian political systems. The article provides a case study of the Hacking Team, an international "cybersecurity" firm offering spyware and surveillance systems to government security agencies, which was itself hacked and "doxed" in 2015. The leak of documents contributes new knowledge of an international political economy for software products, which exploits the digital rights of targets and which could further undermine general Internet security.

This article investigates contemporary cultural policy reforms enabled by paid digital media distribution services, taking the case of the integration of Spotify into the Swedish public media system. Specifically, it reflects on the conflicts arising over the prioritization of digital distribution over cultural preservation, during the gradual substitution of the Spotify digital services for the services provided by the traditional material media archive, the Grammofonarkivet. It considers the factors influencing changes in the Swedish cultural policy environment and the nature of the complaints and human rights claims made by employees of the Grammofonarkivet to UNESCO regarding its structural transformation. It also postulates a Spotification model of public service media emerging in Sweden but potentially affecting other countries with public media systems served by traditional media archives.

This article introduces the contributions to this special section of the journal, frames the scope of contemporary digital piracy research in the social sciences and humanities, and relates the research project to neighboring fields in communication and media studies.