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Characterizing Copyright in the Classroom: The Cultural Work of Antipiracy Campaigns†
Abstract and Figures
To curb unauthorized downloading, the major media corporations have developed education campaigns aimed at children. This essay interrogates these campaigns in terms of their characterization of copyright law and online infringement. Their lessons tend to recast a balance of societal interests as a simple obligation of respect. File trading is painted in moral terms of right and wrong. Moreover, these campaigns perpetuate industry-centric ideas of what copyright is for and how technology is meant to be used. In the process they reaffirm traditional hierarchies of cultural production and reify the long-standing distinction between producer and consumer—far from neutral assertions in the current debates about cultural policy, and that work against the tide of emerging forms of creativity and collaboration.
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... Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, πειρατεία είναι αυτό από το οποίο η δημιουργική βιομηχανία θα πρέπει να προστατεύεται, ως εκ τούτου νοηματοδοτείται ως μια σειρά ετερογενών πρακτικών που παραπέμπει σε εξαιρετικά αρνητικές συνδέσεις με τα άτομα που τις διαπράττουν. Έτσι, η πειρατεία παρουσιάζεται ως «κλοπή» (πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων), δηλαδή ως «έγκλημα» το οποίο επιβάλλει ένα νομικό καθεστώς κυρώσεων και απαγορεύσεων (Gillespie, 2009). ...
... Υπάρχει σαφής διαφορά στον τόνο μεταξύ των εκστρατειών κατά της πειρατείας που απευθύνονται σε παιδιά και εκείνων που απευθύνονται σε ενήλικες. Τα μικρότερα παιδιά βρίσκονται ακόμη στη διαδικασία εκμάθησης του τι είναι σωστό και τι λάθος και θα πρέπει να αντιμετωπίζονται με διαφορετικό τρόπο Η ασφάλεια στον κυβερνοχώρο είναι ένα ιδιαίτερα ελκυστικό παράδειγμα για αυτές τις εκστρατείες, συμβουλεύοντας τα παιδιά να ενημερώνουν τους γονείς τους στις περιπτώσεις που συναντούν περιεχόμενο που τα κάνει να αισθάνονται άβολα, να μην δίνουν τις προσωπικές τους πληροφορίες κ.ο.κ.. Ωστόσο, η έμφαση στον σεβασμό των πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων παραμένει συνήθως αρκετά περιορισμένη, καθώς δύσκολα μπορεί να παρουσιαστεί ως εξίσου σοβαρή απειλή (Gillespie, 2009). ...
... Ισχυρισμοί που επισημαίνουν ότι η πειρατεία υπονομεύει την δημιουργική παραγωγή σε εθνικό ή και Ευρωπαϊκό επίπεδο συχνά συνοδεύονται από στατιστικές που πιστοποιούν πρόσφατες ή μελλοντικές οικονομικές απώλειες. Μάλιστα, η έμφαση στην αδικία στην οποία υπόκεινται οι δημιουργοί εξηγεί τη διαδεδομένη χρήση χαρακτήρων κινουμένων σχεδίων σε αυτές τις εκστρατείες, και ιδιαίτερα των υπερηρώων και αποτελεί εδώ και πολύ καιρό κοινό μέρος των εκπαιδευτικών εκστρατειών που απευθύνονται σε παιδιά (Gillespie, 2009). ...
ΑΞΙΟΛΟΓΗΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΟΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΙΚΩΝ ΕΠΙΠΤΩΣΕΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΠΕΙΡΑΤΕΙΑΣ ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΤΑΡΤΙΣΗ ΠΡΟΤΑΣΕΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗΣ. Based on alternative scenarios, the total annual impact of the audiovisual piracy on Greece's GDP is estimated at more than €400 million. Moreover, the study estimates that the number of jobs lost each year is even higher than 5,000 (total economy). Annual tax losses from pay-TV (VAT 24%, special levy 10%) are estimated at up to €94million, while annual losses for the domestic legal market amount to up to €258million.
One of the most important findings of the study is the negative impact of the 10% special levy imposed on Greek pay-tv platforms. This measure reinforces the phenomenon of piracy, as it increases the cost for legitimate domestic services, making them less competitive both in relation to international platforms that are not subject to a similar fee and to pirated packages.
The study empirically documents the existence of a wide economic circuit, with around 800,000 illegal connections and an estimated annual turnover of more than €190 million. According to data from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), Greece is among the countries with the highest rates of use of illegal audiovisual content in Europe, with 60% of young people aged 16-24 watching content from illegal sources.
Lack of awareness and education is highlighted by the study as a key factor in the extent of the phenomenon, with users exposed to serious risks such as malware and loss of personal data.
... They also involved themselves in Internet governance, to extend copyright protection online (Bridy, 2012;. Major copyright-holding industries developed elaborate public awareness campaigns regarding the perils to consumers and creators of any unlicensed copying (Gillespie, 2009). Creative practices facilitated by digital, networked technologies were stalled, changed, or buried as a result of copyright questions or challenges (authors). ...
... Large copyright holders fought to protect their legacy business models from technological disruption by doubling down on copyright enforcement as a principal bulwark against competition and industrial change (Decherney, 2012;Lardner, 1987;Litman, 2006: 89-101;Patry, 2009: 2-39;Sinnreich, 2013). They also involved themselves in Internet governance, to extend copyright protection online (Bridy, 2012(Bridy, , 2016; major copyright-holding industries developed elaborate public awareness campaigns regarding the perils to consumers and creators of any unlicensed copying (Gillespie, 2009). Creative practices facilitated by digital, networked technologies were stalled, changed, or buried as a result of copyright questions or challenges (Aufderheide et al., 2019;Sinnreich et al., 2020). ...
This article maps patterns of interest in key terms associated with copyright and online culture in the US context. Using exploratory factor analysis of data from Google Trends, authors examined patterns in keyword searches between 2004 and 2019. The data show three distinct periods of interest. The first period consists of utopian, cause-driven search terms; the second marks a rise and eventual decline in creatively motivated, maker-fueled searches; and the third is characterized by rising utilitarian and institutional interest in accessible copyrighted material. These data show empirically that the public curiosity about alternatives to strict copyright have changed during the study period. Earlier, more idealistic movements contrast with later, more practical approaches.
... Many professionals have learned their field in a permissions-only culture, and express doubt and concern about employing fair use (Aufderheide, Milosevic, & Bello, 2016). Their doubt and concern has been deepened by media and software companies' aggressive antipiracy publicity, which often demonizes any act of copying (Gillespie, 2009;Patry, 2009;Rosenthal, 2015). Codes of best practices in fair use offer a bridge between community values and the seemingly abstract world of fair use, helping communities overcome fear. ...
Copyright problems may inhibit the crucially important work of preserving legacy software. Such software is worthy of study in its own right because it is critical to accessing digital culture and expression. Preservation work is essential for communicating across boundaries of the past and present in a digital era. Software preservationists in the United States have addressed their copyright problems by developing a code of best practices in employing fair use. Their work is an example of how collective action by users of law changes the norms and beliefs about law, which can in turn change the law itself insofar as the law takes account of community norms and practices. The work of creating the code involved facilitators who are communication, information sciences, and legal scholars and practitioners. Thus, the creation of the code is also an example of crossing the boundaries between technology and policy research.
A framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society.
Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership. Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other's limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know.
Contributors (Listed in Order of Appearance)Marjolijn Bol, Lissant Bolton, Cynthia Brokaw, Marius Buning, Myles W. Jackson, James Leach, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Viren Murthy, Vivek S. Oak, Jörn Oeder, Dagmar Schäfer, Amy E. Slaton
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, the body of legal doctrine and practice that governs the ownership of information, is animated by a dichotomy of creatorship and infringement. In the most often repeated narratives of creatorship/infringement in the United States, the former produces a social and economic good while the latter works against the production of that social and economic good. Creators, those individuals whose work is deemed protectable under copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and unfair competition law, create valuable products that contribute to economic growth and public knowledge. Infringers, those individuals who use the work of creators without their permission, steal those valuable products and act as drains on economic growth and public knowledge. These narratives, while comforting, are frequently oversimplified in public cultural conversations, in ways that center and elevate Westernness and whiteness and obscure and replicate histories of race and (neo)colonialism. THE COLOR OF CREATORSHIP is a book about the historical and continuing relationships between race and (neo)coloniality in intellectual property law. In it, I join a respected and growing group of scholars in contending that intellectual property law is a set of rhetorics about citizenship. However, unlike those who have previously written about the relationships between intellectual property and citizenship, I focus on the latter as a discourse through which race and coloniality continue to structure doctrinal practices in copyright, patent, and trademark law. Citizenship in the United States was and continues to be a raced concept. More specifically, it is a concept constructed by and through constantly evolving public cultural conceptions of Americanness, white masculinity, property, racial capitalism, and labor. (This document is an excerpt of the introduction.)
This book explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. It argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is changing in fundamental ways. We are witnessing the emergence of legal institutions adapted to the information age, but their form and their substance remain undetermined and are the subjects of intense struggle. One level for legal-institutional transformation involves baseline understandings of entitlement and disentitlement. Both lawyers and laypeople tend to think of legal entitlements as relatively fixed, but the ongoing transformation in political economy has set things in motion in ways that traditional accounts do not contemplate. In particular, the datafication of important resources and the shift to a platform-based, massively intermediated communications environment have profoundly reshaped both the organization of economic activity and the patterns of information exchange. The authority of platforms is both practical and normative, and it has become both something taken for granted and a powerful force reshaping the law in its own image. Another level for legal-institutional transformation involves the structure and operation of regulatory and governance institutions. Patterns of institutional change in the networked information era express a generally neoliberalized and managerialist stance toward the law’s projects and processes. They reflect deeply embedded beliefs about the best uses of new technological capabilities to manage legal and regulatory processes and account for activities of legal and regulatory concern.
The Closed World offers a radically new alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Arguing that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons, Paul Edwards shows how Cold War social and cultural contexts shaped emerging computer technology—and were transformed, in turn, by information machines.
The Closed World explores three apparently disparate histories—the history of American global power, the history of computing machines, and the history of subjectivity in science and culture—through the lens of the American political imagination. In the process, it reveals intimate links between the military projects of the Cold War, the evolution of digital computers, and the origins of cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence.
Edwards begins by describing the emergence of a "closed-world discourse" of global surveillance and control through high-technology military power. The Cold War political goal of "containment" led to the SAGE continental air defense system, Rand Corporation studies of nuclear strategy, and the advanced technologies of the Vietnam War. These and other centralized, computerized military command and control projects—for containing world-scale conflicts—helped closed-world discourse dominate Cold War political decisions. Their apotheosis was the Reagan-era plan for a "Star Wars" space-based ballistic missile defense.
Edwards then shows how these military projects helped computers become axial metaphors in psychological theory. Analyzing the Macy Conferences on cybernetics, the Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, and the early history of artificial intelligence, he describes the formation of a "cyborg discourse." By constructing both human minds and artificial intelligences as information machines, cyborg discourse assisted in integrating people into the hyper-complex technological systems of the closed world.
Finally, Edwards explores the cyborg as political identity in science fiction—from the disembodied, panoptic AI of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the mechanical robots of Star Wars and the engineered biological androids of Blade Runner—where Information Age culture and subjectivity were both reflected and constructed.
Inside Technology series
The high level of innovation currently transforming our society and its technological dynamics can be seen as a second wave of innovation of the third technological system, which emerged in the late 1970s. This book discusses the concept of technological systems, focusing on the tools used for formalizing the organization of technology in society and its dynamics of evolution. The author uses these tools to characterize the contemporary technological system and to model its specific dynamics. In doing so, he raises questions about the continuity of the current technological system, and its capacity to generate powerful innovatory movements.
Launching into a complete analysis of copyright law in our capitalistic and hegemonistic political system, Ronald Bettig uncovers the power of the wealthy few to expand their fortunes through the ownership and manipulation of intellectual property. Beginning with a critical interpretation of copyright history in the United States, Bettig goes on to explore such crucial issues as the videocassette recorder and the control of copyrights, the invention of cable television and the first challenge to the filmed entertainment copyright system, the politics and economics of intellectual property as seen from both the neoclassical economists and the radical political economists points of view, and methods of resisting existing laws. Launching into a complete analysis of copyright law in our capitalistic and hegemonistic political system, Ronald Bettig uncovers the power of the wealthy few to expand their fortunes through the ownership and manipulation of intellectual property. Beginning with a critical interpretation of copyright history in the United States, Bettig goes on to explore such crucial issues as the videocassette recorder and the control of copyrights, the invention of cable television and the first challenge to the filmed entertainment copyright system, the politics and economics of intellectual property as seen from both the neoclassical economists and the radical political economists points of view, and methods of resisting existing laws.Beautifully written and well argued, this book provides a long, clear look at how capitalism and capitalists seize and control culture through the ownership of copyrights, thus perpetuating their own ideologies and economic superiority.
