Copyright in China’s digital cultural industries

This chapter explores how and why copyright’s role is expanding and changing in China, focusing on recent developments in digital content markets. It considers the impact of uneven media sector reform processes on the emergence of ‘born digital’ copyright industries in China. There are signs that the commercial benefits of copyright compliance are beginning to outweigh the advantages of operating outside the intellectual property system for many Chinese stakeholders. We argue that these developments – in particular the emergence of widespread exclusive licensing practices – signal a watershed moment for China’s cultural and creative industries, highlighting the potential for digital technology to create new markets for legitimate content and services, as well as the importance of global dynamics in the development of digital era copyright industries

Dynamics of expectations and linked ecologies: a case study of the Copyright Hub

This thesis examines the development of the Copyright Hub, an emerging infrastructural initiative, designed to streamline the processes of expressing, identifying and communicating Intellectual Property (IP) rights information, especially copyright licensing, across sectors of the creative industries. The study highlights the origins of the Copyright Hub and the provision of public support for its R&D as a product of divergent pressures: the creative industries sought government action to redress their concerns about difficulties in enforcing copyright in a digital world; government sought to stimulate the economy through fostering sustainable digital industries. The project however did not fulfil its promise of enabling the innovation of new market infrastructures for trading copyright-protected content. To go beyond prevalent snapshot studies of innovation, this research draws upon the Biographies of Artifacts and Practices (BOAP) approach, which informs the methodological choice of multi-site, longitudinal fieldwork. A rich account of the unfolding of a field of innovation is provided, combining archival and contemporary ethnographic sources. The analysis applies concepts from the sociology of expectations (and in particular ‘arenas of expectations’) to understand the process by which visions and expectations are mobilised to accumulate public and private funding and support, as well as understanding the dynamics of development of the Copyright Hub project. These notions are complemented by Abbott’s concept of “linked ecologies”, which helps in scrutinising the interrelation of actors within the policy-making ecology and its neighbouring ecologies of business and IP standard development. In addition, Abbott’s discussion on “things of boundaries” provides a helpful template for conceptualising the processes through which protected spaces are constructed. The thesis makes three main contributions to knowledge. 1. It provides a rich, empirical description of the Copyright Hub initiative from its embryonic stages when novel ideas are being formed, new alliances are being made, and resources are mobilised to build a protected space for innovation development. In addition to high expectations, this research managed to capture and portray how ‘low’ and ‘slow’ expectations can help in propelling the Copyright Hub project by (a) ensuring existing market actors that the new initiative would not cannibalise their commercial interests, and (b) providing for stability in policy making which counter-balanced the rapid re-bundling of policy issues around IP. The substantive area of developing digital infrastructures for IP licensing and management is per se of wider interest to policy makers, creative industries and scholars of innovation studies. 2. It contributes to the sociology of expectations by furthering our understanding of “arenas of expectations” as the battleground where adjacent ecologies meet in search of alliances, resources and support. Policy makers, businesses and infrastructure entrepreneurs do not compete alone, but rather in alliance, and thus any successful strategy must provide “dual rewards” for members of the alliance in both ecologies at once. For example, the Copyright Hub successfully acted as a “hinge”, which helped the UK creative industries prevent further copyright exceptions being imposed upon them, while allowing the government to fight off criticism of the dearth of visions and policies for long-term economic growth. Similarly, arenas of expectations are not isolated phenomena, but they are linked together through members of an alliance in its overall struggle for power. 3. It helps in reconceptualising “protected spaces”. The protected space for the development of the Copyright Hub’s technology was established through explicit act of various actors yoking together three “sites of differences”: the Copyright Hub Ltd., the Digital Catapult, and the Linked Content Coalition. These sites of differences brought with them constraints, preferences, and vested interests into the development process and played a crucial role in shaping the innovation’s trajectory. When the interest needed to hold these social boundaries in place was no longer adequate, the protected space would be dissolved. Yet, elements of such spaces do not completely disappear but morph, transform and eventually constitute new protected spaces or other types of social entities. In the case of the Copyright Hub, for example, the protected space was eventually dissolved when the Digital Catapult withdrew from the project, yet elements developed within this space morphed and constituted a new project named ARDITO, whose objectives were to develop actual services in the marketplace from the Copyright Hub’s pilot use cases

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Entrepreneurship, Entry and Exit in Creative Industries: an explorative Survey

Series: Creative Industries in Vienna: Development, Dynamics and Potential

Determinants in the on-line distribution of digital content: an exploratory analysis

This article shows the phases – and discusses the results – of an empirical analysis addressing the legal business models that are adopted online to distribute digital content

Bodily relations and reciprocity in the art of Sonia Khurana

This article explores the significance of the ‘somatic’ and ‘ontological turn’ in locating the radical politics articulated in the contemporary performance, installation, video and digital art practices of New Delhi-based artist, Sonia Khurana (b. 1968). Since the late 1990s Khurana has fashioned a range of artworks that require new sorts of reciprocal and embodied relations with their viewers. While this line of art practice suggests the need for a primarily philosophical mode of inquiry into an art of the body, such affective relations need to be historicised also in relation to a discursive field of ‘difference’ and public expectations about the artist’s ethnic, gendered and national identity. Thus, this intimate, visceral and emotional field of inter- and intra-action is a novel contribution to recent transdisciplinary perspectives on the gendered, social and sentient body, that in turn prompts a wider debate on the ethics of cultural commentary and art historiography

Networks in the shadow of markets and hierarchies : calling the shots in the visual effects industry

The nature and organisation of creative industries and creative work has increasingly been at the centre of academic and policy debates in recent years. The differentiation of this field, economically and spatially, has been tied to more general arguments about the trend towards new trust-based, network forms of organization and economic coordination. In the first part of this paper, we set out, unpack and then critique the conceptual and empirical foundations of such claims. In the main section of the paper, we draw on research into a particular creative sector of the economy - the visual effects component of the film industry - a relatively new though increasingly important global production network. By focusing both on firms and their workers, and drawing on concepts derived from global value chain, labour process and institutional analysis, we aim to offer a more realistic and grounded analysis of creative work within creative industries. The analysis begins with an attempt to explain the power dynamics and patterns of competition and collaboration in inter-firm relations within the Hollywood studio-dominated value chain, before moving to a detailed examination of how the organisation of work and reemployment relations are central to the capturing of value. On the basis of that evidence, we conclude that trust-based networks and collaborative communities play some part in accessing and acquiring leverage in the value chain, but do not explain the core mechanisms of resource allocation, coordination and work organisation

ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT-BASED INDUSTRIES AND IMPACT ON EMPLOYMENT AND PERFORMANCE INDICATORS IN KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY DEVELOPING IN ROMANIA

The economic dimension of copyright-based industries sector in Romania is becoming of higher interest, on the one hand, for policy-makers taking into consideration its increasing contribution to GDP, employment, foreign trade and investment and, on the other hand, as a multidimensional vector for social inclusion, increasing self-confidence, supporting better education in a globalised and multicultural world.The opening of the Romanian economy and society has contributed to higher employment in the creative activities. The new jobs - “high-knowledge jobs” in creative activities or in “non-creative industries” – have several features that could support higher performance. We underline the size and features of employment in the copyright-based industry sector and in core activities in Romania and some performance of labour force. On one hand, press freedom, the increase in the role of civil society, the elimination of censorship represented positive influence factors for new jobs creation in the cultural industries. In this way, the copyright-based industries have become a factor of tension reduction and increased flexibility on the labour market. On the other hand, there are big differences regarding the value of the operational profit per employee and its evolution in time among the core component industries. The analysis of the core copyright industries with respect to the size and evolution of the operational profit per employee, both in the overall sector and the component industries, led us to an interesting and useful classification of the core industries which could be helpful for better decision-making and copyright industries policies.copyright-based industries, cultural-creative industries, employment, high-knowledge jobs

‘Is that my score?’ : between literature and digital games

It is on the margins of what Katherine Hayles calls the ‘shifty’ boundaries between computer games and electronic literature as well as between digital art and electronic literature that I set the focus of this paper. I argue that electronic literature, with its cohabitation of strong elements of play and claims to ‘literariness’, allows for a discussion of the interface between literary theory and digital games by exposing points of contact as well as divergence through the respective claims of the two discourses.peer-reviewe

Museums and New Media Art

Investigates the relationship between new media art and museums