Copyright And Popular Media

Features

Description

Media piracy in music, film and gaming is as much about the future of formal copyright governance as it is about morality and freedom of expression. An illegal consumer is not a bad or immoral person because copyright laws state the act of copyright infringement is against the law. History reveals what social networking in the world of digitalization now tells us - consumers have always engaged in legal and illegal popular media consumption.

Convergent consumption patterns are not new - file sharing is the latest development. However the dominant few which have established the status quo over several decades strongly resist external technological challenges. The corporate elite which control the bulk of popular media and their copyrights strictly preserve the formal legal structures in which copyrights exist.

But the legal reality is that the facade of copyright governance has been seriously challenged in the 21st Century. This book explores the unresolved issues concerned with media piracy and consumption. Review: 'We live in an era in which convergence of the internet, the digitalization of popular media and dominant attitudes toward personal freedom has created the perfect storm for the corporate entertainment media.

This book provides innovative answers to the vexed questions of copyright and digital media piracy from the perspectives of the social sciences and copyright law.' - Paul Boreham, Professor of Political Science, University of Queensland, Australia 'The history of copyright law in popular media is often presented as a one-dimensional story in which a handful of global corporate citizens enjoy unfettered control of intellectual property rights.

Running along side this, however, is a parallel history of the liberal consumer who does not accept nor fit into this one-dimensional story of global copyright regulation and control: the latest example being the users of internet technologies and social networking. This topical book examines the convergence between these apparently distinct histories.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach that combines doctrinal analysis and politico-economic study, the book tells a story of the political control of modern copyright and technological change, and how these impact upon and interact with freedom of expression in Western society. In so doing, the book makes an important and timely contribution to current socio-legal debates on popular media, consumption and copyright governance.' - Brad Sherman, Griffith University, Australia