Discourse, justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?

Digitization and the internet have posed an acute economic challenge to rights holders in the cultural industries. Faced with a threat to their form of capital accumulation from copyright infringement, rights holders have used discourse strategically in order to try and legitimate and strengthen their position in the digital copyright debate with governments and media users. In so doing, they have appealed to general justificatory principles – about what is good, right, and just – that provide some scope for opposition and critique, as other groups contest their interpretation of these principles and the evidence used to support them. In this article, we address the relative lack of academic attention paid to the role of discourse in copyright debates by analysing user-directed marketing campaigns and submissions to UK government policy consultations. We show how legitimacy claims are justified and critiqued, and conclude that amid these debates rests some hope of achieving a more legitimate policy resolution to the copyright wars – or at least the possibility of beginning a more constructive dialogue

Copy rights: The politics of copying and creativity

This article analyses the politics of copyright and copying. Copyright is an increasingly important driver of the modern economy, but this does not exhaust its significance. It matters, we argue, not just for the distribution of rewards and resources in the creative industries, but as a site within which established political concerns – collective and individual interests and identities - are articulated and negotiated, and within which notions of ‘originality’, ‘creativity’ and ‘copying’ are politically constituted. Set against the background of the increasing economic value attributed to the creative industries, the impact of digitalization on them, and the European Union’s Digital Single Market strategy, the article reveals how copyright policy, and the underlying assumptions about ‘copying’ and ‘creativity’, express (often unexamined) political values and ideologies. Drawing on a close reading of policy statements, official reports, court cases, and interviews with stakeholders, we explore the multiple political aspects of copyright, showing how copyright policy operates to privilege particular interests and practices, and to acknowledge only specific forms of creative endeavour

The hegemonic copyright-regime vs. the sharing copyright users of music?

In this commentary the increasing discrepancy between the emerging participatory networked culture and the hegemonic copyright and intellectual property regime is contextualised and subsequently problematised. While this is a feature and growing conflict for every form of authored work – news, films, books, academic work, photography, the focus here is on music and more in particular on the sharing of music. Sharing music is not a new phenomenon, but current copyright users share music with weak peers in addition to strong peers which has taken sharing to a whole different level reminiscent of a gift-culture, but with less need for reciprocity. Music audiences attribute less value to a digital product than to an artefact such as a CD or vinyl record. The reaction of the music industry to these phenomena has been hostile up until now, criminalising the copyright user and lobbying for the close monitoring of the online behaviour of all internet users. However, while the industry foregrounds its potential losses based on the number of downloads, as well as the difficulties this provokes for young beginning artists, others are pointing towards the societal benefits of worldwide free access to such a wide variety of music. Furthermore, several counter-voices in the copyright debate have emerged, from copyleft to copyriot and more and more artists mainstream and alternative are engaging fully with the participatory culture. In this commentary an argument is developed in favour of the music industry embracing this participatory networked culture rather than take us back to the future of 1984. Democracy and civic liberties are more important than the corporate interests of a few

New visions, old practices: policy and regulation in the internet era

Raymond Williams’ comment applies as much to the media and communication systems of his time as it does to today’s Internet era. As Silverstone (2007: 26) wrote, “mediated connection and interconnection define the dominant infrastructure for the conduct of social, political and economic life across the globe”. The Internet is no more a neutral configuration of technologies than was the earlier media and communication system. If there are forces that are shaping the Internet’s development in ways that are not equitable then there is a case for countering them. This paper offers an assessment of current trends in policy and regulation that bear on the Internet. The aim is to discern whether visions of a post-neoliberal period are visible in policy and regulatory practice in this area. Though some argue that developments in Internet governance are beginning to wrest control of the Internet away from state or private sector influence, I suggest that this is a very one-sided view. In this paper, I argue that the forces influencing Internet developments are not benign because an unregulated Internet is unlikely to maximise the benefits of the Internet for all. This paper focuses on corporate interests in the Internet’s evolution and on the state’s role in regulating various components of the infrastructure and services that employ the Internet. The following section considers the paradoxical alliance between the neoliberal agenda and the advocates of the open unregulated Internet. The impact of the neoliberal agenda on the telecommunication, broadcast and Internet segments of the media and communication industry is then considered briefly, providing a basis for a more in-depth consideration of the incentives encouraging corporate actors to engage in monopolisation strategies as a means of maximising their profits. In the penultimate section, the likelihood of a shift to policy based on a post-neoliberal paradigm is explored through an examination of some recent developments in network infrastructure, broadcast content and radio frequency spectrum policy

Incorporation of a high performance, four-cylinder, four-stroke motorcycle engine into a snowmobile application

For the 2003 and 2004 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenges, the successful implementation of a clean, quiet, high-performance four-stroke motorcycle engine into an existing snowmobile chassis was achieved. For the 2005 Challenge, a new motor and chassis were selected to continue the development of a four cylinder, four stroke powered snowmobile. The snowmobile is as powerful as today\u27s production performance models, as nimble as production touring sleds, easy to start, and environmentally friendly. This report describes the conversion process in detail with actual dynamometer, emissions, noise, and field test data, and also provides analysis of the development processes and data. The vehicle meets the proposed 2012 EPA snowmobile emissions regulations and is significantly quieter than a stock snowmobile