Copying, copyright and originality; imitation, transformation and popular musicians

With copyright becoming ever more important for business and government, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the practices and values associated with copying in popular music culture and advocates a more critical approach to notions of originality. Drawing from interviews with working musicians this article challenges the approaches to copying and popular music that pitch corporate notions of piracy against creative sharing by citizens. It explores differing approaches to the circulation of recordings and identifies three distinct types of creative copying: i) learning through imitation, ii) copying as transformation, iii) copying for commercial opportunity. The article then considers how copying is caught between a commercial necessity for familiar musical products that must conform to existing expectations and a copyright legislative rationale requiring original sounds with individual owners. The article highlights how legacies from a long history of human copying as a means of acquiring knowledge and skills leads to a collision of creative musical practices, commercial imperatives and copyright regulation and results in a series of unavoidable tensions around originality and copying that are a central characteristic of cultural production

Digitalization, Fragmentation, and Justice in Nigeria

No abstract available

Institutional Foundations of Construction ICT: A View from the West Midlands of England

Construction industry is of strategic importance to economic development and growth within any region and nation. However, the industry is confronted by many challenges including poor labour productivity. Part of the explanation frequently provided in literature is that the industry has been slow to adopt and institutionalize useful information and communication technologies (ICT). The research questions asked in this article are: What are the institutional foundations for West-Midlands construction firms to deliver their projects based on ICT and how can these be strengthened? These questions are asked for two reasons. The first is to understand the reasons behind slow ICT adoption and second, to inquire into what can be done about it. The article provides an overview of projects using advanced ICT in the region and presents the results of a focus group discussion undertaken with six industry experts. Scott’s pillars of institutions were used for understanding how the foundations for ICT adaption in the region can be strengthened. Findings are that present regulations, incentives and perceptions of ICT can be further strengthened. While ICT adoption appears to accelerate in large projects, many practitioners remain sceptical as to whether the excessive costs associated with ICT adoptions are justified. The regulative pressures exerted by government in support of ICT adoption do not seem to have fully materialised in industrial practice. However, it is apparent that the normative and cultural cognitive pressures are rendered weak in the region with using advanced ICT being viewed as extraordinary rather than standard industrial practice