Toward a Cooperative Governance of Digital Cultural Goods: Limits and Transformations of the Classical Copyright Paradigm

Abstract

The phenomenon of digital piracy exposes a structural rift between traditional legal categories and the sociotechnological conditions of contemporary society, in which the informational abundance and immateriality of cultural goods undermine the assumptions of scarcity and exclusivity that once sustained classical copyright law. Within this framework, the aim of this article is to critically examine digital piracy as a moral and sociotechnological expression of distributive justice, in order to propose a regulatory paradigm that integrates equitable access, sustainability of the digital ecosystem, and institutional trust. The findings indicate that punitive policies and restrictive technological systems are ineffective and even counterproductive, as they erode the legitimacy of the system and reinforce moral resistance. In contrast, contexts that provide accessible legal alternatives, adaptive pricing, and open licensing exhibit higher levels of voluntary compliance. The evidence suggests that regulatory sustainability depends less on coercion than on perceptions of justice and social participation in the formulation of norms. Consequently, the study concludes that rebuilding institutional legitimacy requires a shift from a logic of control to one of cooperation, establishing a digital governance framework grounded in distributive equity, transparency, and trust as the foundations of legitimate and sustainable knowledge regulation.