Search

Orthodox copyright scholarship frames piracy in ‘developing’ countries as a detrimental and illegal practice that results from these countries’ lack of economic, social and cultural development. It argues that piracy needs to be discouraged, regulated, and finally overcome for legitimate business to flourish. In this article, the authors challenge this viewpoint and question whether the implementation of international copyright instruments in legislation across Africa really promotes those local economies or if it merely exposes them to neo-colonial exploitation. While the early international treaties on intellectual property rights (IPR) were formulated by European states and implemented in most parts of Africa through colonial laws, more recent legislation has been globally implemented through institutions such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization, which remain dominated by Western interests. Through a structured overview of the adoption of IPR treaties in African countries, the authors advance a political economy perspective of intellectual property rights as a (neo-)colonial regime., Les membres de l’école traditionnelle sur les questions de droits d’auteurs mettent en avant le piratage dans les pays « en développement » comme une pratique préjudiciable et illégale qui résulte du manque de développement économique, social et culturel de ces pays. Ils soutiennent que le piratage doit être découragé, réglementé et finalement surmonté pour que le commerce légitime puisse prospérer. À travers cet article, nous remettons en question ce point de vue et nous nous demandons si la mise en place de mesures internationales relatives au droit d’auteur dans la législation à travers le continent africain, favorise réellement ces économies locales ou si elles ne font que les exposer à l’exploitation néo-coloniale. Alors que les premiers traités internationaux sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle étaient formulés par des États européens puis appliqués à travers la plupart des régions d’Afrique à travers les lois coloniales, plus récemment la législation a été globalement mise en oeuvre par des institutions telles que l’Organisation des Nations unies ou l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, qui restent dominées par les intérêts occidentaux. À travers une vue d’ensemble structurée de l’adoption des traités sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle dans les pays africains, nous mettons en avant une perspective d’économie politique des droits de propriété intellectuelle en tant que régime (néo-)colonial.

Since the 1970s international law has tried to provide protection for traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). Academics, activists and policymakers have discussed how to apply a legal framework based on Western norms of authorship on various forms of creativity that exist in different traditional communities. While aiming to acknowledge indigenous rights, this discourse also reflects assumptions and distinctions regarding differences between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures, relating to concepts of commons as well as individual and collective authorship. Here certain norms of cultural creativity are taken for granted, not only with regards to indigenous cultures but also regarding a Western cultural heritage. This article questions these assumptions by analyzing international legislation regarding the protection of TCEs and comparing them to the articulation of creativity and cultural entitlements in European cultural and legal discourses. It takes a particular paragraph in the Swedish copyright law, regarding the so called “protection of classics”, as a case study to discuss the inconsistencies between individual authorship and collective cultural entitlements within Western copyright law. Eventually it takes a decolonizing perspective on dichotomies between concepts such as: Western/non-Western; modern/traditional; authored/non-authored and intellectual property/cultural property., Commons and Commodities, finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet och Marie Skldowska Curie Actions Grant E0633901

The ideas and ideals of authorship and the discourse on property rights that emerged in parallelsince the 18th century have come to form the bedrock of copyright law. Critical copyright scholars arguethat this construction of authorship and ownership contributes to individualisation and privatisationof artistic works that disregards the collective aspects of creativity. It also embodies a certain kind ofauthorial character—or “author function” as Michel Foucault puts it—imbued with racial and genderedpowers and privileges. While the gendered and racialised biases of intellectual property rights are welldocumented within copyright research, the commodification of ideas and cultural expressions relies onindividualisation of creativity that is significant not only to the cultural economy but also to the 20th-centurynotion of the entrepreneur as the protagonist of capitalism. This article relates the idea of the entrepreneurto the deconstruction of authorship that was initiated by Foucault and Roland Barthes in the late 1960s,and the critique of an author-centred IPR regime developed by law scholars in the 1990s. It asks if and howthe deconstruction of the author as a cultural and ideological persona that underpins the privatisationof immaterial resources can help us understand the construction and function of the entrepreneur inextractive capitalism., Commons and Commodities: Knowledge, Natural Resources and the Construction of Property

n/a

This article investigates how resources that are perceived as common are turned into property through different interventions of extractivism, and how this provokes counter-activism from groups and actors who see their rights and living conditions threatened by the practices of extraction. The article looks at how extraction is enacted through three distinct practices: prospecting, enclosure and unbundling, studied through three different cases. The cases involve resources that are material and immaterial, renewable as well as non-renewable, ‘natural’ as well as man-made. Prospecting is exemplified by patenting of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, enclosure is exemplified by debates over copyright expansionism and information commons, and unbundling through conflicts over mining and gas extraction. The article draws on fieldwork involving interviews and participant observation with protesters at contested mining sites in Australia and with digital rights activists from across the world who protest against how the expansion of copyright limits public access to culture and information. The article departs from an understanding of ‘commons’ not as an open access resource, but as a resource shared by a group of people, often subjected to particular social norms that regulate how it can be used. Enclosure and extraction are both social processes, dependent on recognising some and downplaying or misrecognising other social relations when it comes to resources and processes of property creation. These processes are always, regardless of the particular resources at stake, cultural in the sense that the uses of the commons are regulated through cultural norms and contracts, but also that they carry profound cultural and social meanings for those who use them. Finally, the commonalities and heterogeneities of these protest movements are analysed as ‘working in common’, where the resistance to extraction in itself represents a process of commoning., Funding agencies: Swedish Research Council; Marie Skldowska Curie Actions [E0633901, INCA 600398], Commons and Commodities

This book takes the concept of piracy as a starting point to discuss the instabilityof property as a social construction and how this is spatially situated. Piracyis understood as acts and practices that emerge in zones where the constructionand definition of property is ambiguous. Media piracy is a frequently usedexample where file-sharersand copyright holders argue whether culture andinformation is a common resource to be freely shared or property to be protected.This book highlights that this is not a dilemma unique to immaterialresources: concepts such as property, ownership and the rights of use are just asdiffuse when it comes to spatial resources such as land, water, air or urban space.By structuring the book around this heterogeneous understanding of piracy asan analytical perspective, the editors and contributors advance a transdisciplinaryand multi-theoreticalapproach to place and property. In doing so, thebook moves from theoretical discussions on commons and property to empiricalcases concerning access to and appropriation of land, natural and culturalresources. The chapters cover areas such as maritime piracy, the philosophicaland legal foundations of property rights, mining and land rights, biopiracy andtraditional knowledge, indigenous rights, colonization of space, military expansionismand the enclosure of urban space.This book is essential reading for a variety of disciplines including indigenousstudies, cultural studies, geography, political economy, law, environmentalstudies and all readers concerned with piracy and the ambiguity of property.

This article takes the politicisation of copyright and file sharing as a starting point to discuss the concept of the commons and the construction of property. Empirically, the article draws on a series of interviews with Pirate Party members in Sweden, Australia, Germany, the UK and USA; placed in the theoretical framework of the commons. We argue that piracy, as an act and an ideology, interrogates common understandings of property as something self-evident, natural and uncontestable. Such constructions found liberal market ideology. The article has two broad aims: to outline the different phases of enclosure, from the physical commons, to the institutional and finally the cultural commons; and to discuss the way that piracy highlights the emergent crisis in private property rights, brought to the fore by the global financial crisis and ongoing privatization of public resources. We conclude by questioning what new modes of enclosure are emerging in a digital economy driven by excessive data mining and centralized streaming services., The Ideology of Piracy

Since the 1990s, the understanding of how and where politics are made has changed radically. Scholars such as Ulrich Beck and Maria Bakardjieva have discussed how political agency is enacted outside of conventional party organizations, and political struggles increasingly focus on single issues. Over the past two decades, this transformation of politics has become common knowledge, not only in academic research but also in the general political discourse. Recently, the proliferation of digital activism and the political use of social media are often understood to enforce these tendencies. This article analyzes the Pirate Party in relation to these theories, relying on almost 30 interviews with active Pirate Party members from different parts of the world. The Pirate Party was initially formed in 2006, focusing on copyright, piracy, and digital privacy. Over the years, it has developed into a more general democracy movement, with an interest in a wider range of issues. This article analyzes how the party’s initial focus on information politics and social media connects to a wider range of political issues and to other social movements, such as Arab Spring protests and Occupy Wall Street. Finally, it discusses how this challenges the understanding of information politics as a single issue agenda., Piratkopieringens ideologi

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Time Magazine named ‘The Protester’, 2011s Person of the Year. Revolts, social unrest and demands for systemic change continue to spread from the anti-austerity street marches in Europe and the progressive ‘No Borders’ global movement, to protests against neoconservative and xenophobic populist movements. Histories are currently being (re)written and he immanence and promise of large scale political revolutions is as present today as ever on our planet. As the goals and aspirations of protesters across the world become more heterogeneous and less programmatic, it becomes increasingly hard to say what ‘the protester’ wants and where ‘the revolution’ will take us. This book embraces the ambiguity and heterogeneity of contemporary protest movements, pointing to how the potentials of revolutionary acts reside behind seemingly irrelevant, disorganized outbursts of apparently aimless acts. Giving meaning to the sign carried by a protester of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration: ‘We’re here; we’re unclear; get used to it’.

Since the early days of parliamentary democracy, political movements have tried to cometo terms with the conflict between the struggle for radical political change and the need tobe accepted as a respectable alternative within parliamentary politics. This paper analyzeshow this conflict has played out in the Pirate Party: a political party focusing on issues ofcopyright, surveillance, access to information, and right to privacy in a digital age. Sincethe first Pirate Party was formed in Sweden in 2006, national pirate parties haveemerged across Europe, North America and Australia, and they have occasionally wonrepresentation in different parliaments.This article looks at how the Pirate Party has handled the tensions between radical andreformist fractions, contextualized within contemporary social movement theories. Theconflicts have largely dealt with colliding principles for political organization whereconventional party structures are challenged by new, and assumingly less hierarchic,forms of interaction and decision making inspired by radical, digital protests movements.This study rests on a series of interviews with Pirate Party members in Sweden, the USAand Germany. It analyses the interviews in relation to Ulrich Beck’s and MariaBakardjieva’s theories on subpolitics and subactivism, asking why a movement thatcomes across as the prototype for a decentered, networked, subpolitical movementdecides to organize as a parliamentary political party and what consequences that has hadfor the Pirate Party., Piratkopieringens ideologi: En studie av piratkopiering, upphovsrätt och modernitet i Sverige, USA och Australien

Academic publishing is a strange business. One might hope and expect that most scholars, regardless of discipline, would see it as one of their major academic du-ties to share their findings, and to interact with their peers and the general popu-lace, via literal public-ation – the making-public of new knowledge. But even with such lofty ideals, the realpolitik of where, when, and how academics publish their scholarly work – based on the contemporary pressures and tensions of funding environments, the quantification and metricisation of scholarly work, and mecha-nisms for recognition and career reward – can lead to some curious and even per-verse effects.

A political battle is being waged over the use and control of culture and information. While media companies and copyright organisations argue for stricter intellectual property laws, a growing body of citizens challenge the contemporary IP-regime. This has seen a political mobilisation of piracy. Pirate parties see themselves as a digital civil rights movement, defending the public domain and the citizen’s right to privacy against copyright expansionism and increased surveillance. Since the first pirate party was formed in Sweden in 2006, similar parties have emerged across the world. This article draws on a study of the culture and ideology of copyright resistance, through interviews with pirate party representatives in Europe and North America. It focuses on challenges to democracy, and the distinction between public and private property and spaces, in the wake of the war on terror and the global financial crisis., Piratkopieringens ideologi: En studie av piratkopiering, upphovsrätt och modernitet i Sverige, USA och Australien

Under de senaste decennierna har ”kulturen” alltmer beskrivits som en outnyttjad resurs för ekonomisk tillväxt och regional utveckling. Detta har också varit knutet till föreställningar om en omvandling av samhällsekonomin i stort och uppkomsten av en ny ekonomi, som har beskrivits som en upplevelse- eller kreativ ekonomi. Både utomlands och i Sverige finns det otaliga exempel på kultursatsningar som antingen kan betraktas som uttryck för eller implementeringar av dessa ekonomier. Överlag är dock deras genomslag oklart, inte minst om man ser till kultursektorn. Så är också fallet i Norrköping, som utgör fokus för den här studien av kulturellt och kreativt inriktade verksamheter och satsningar. Till viss del kan detta förklaras av att diskursen (talet, diskussionen eller samtalet) om upplevelse- och den kreativa ekonomin bidrar till att lösa upp etablerade föreställningar om och definitioner av kultur, liksom gränserna mellan olika samhälls- och ekonomiska sektorer. Med fokus på upplevelser och kreativitet överskrider dessa ekonomier gränserna mellan olika kulturella genrer, samhällssektorer, näringsgrenar och branscher. Detta återspeglar sig inte minst i anspråken på att vidga synen på kultursektorn genom att omdefiniera den till en kreativ sektor. Samtidigt är det långt ifrån klart vad som kan räknas till de ekonomier, samhällssektorer eller näringsgrenar som avgränsas med upplevelse- eller kreativitetsbegreppet. Denna oklarhet diskuteras i den första delen av boken (kapitel 1-3), där också olika teorier kring, förklaringsmodeller till och avgränsningar av upplevelse- och den kreativa ekonomin granskas. Likaså diskuteras de kulturpolitiska konsekvenserna av dessa ekonomiers intåg i kulturlandskapet, med tonvikt vid den kulturpolitik som förts i Norrköping. I den andra delen av boken (kapitel 4-8) ställs diskussionen i den första delen i relation till den kreativa ekonomins genomslag och mottagande i några kultur- och kreativt inriktade verksamheter i Norrköping. Vi

Over the last decade piracy has become a source of constant debate. While copyright organisations describe piracy as simple theft, others regard it as a legitimate form of cultural consumption in a digital environment. Piracy is, however, not a phenomenon unique to digital media of the 21st century. This article takes the history of copyright and piracy as a starting point for a discussion about piracy as a cultural and political phenomenon that goes beyond the contemporary preoccupation with particular piratical practices such as file sharing. It seeks to show how copyright and piracy are integrated aspects of modern society, equally situated in the urban, social space of the modern city and the global, geopolitical landscape of colonialism in the past and the present. One might call it a study of how piracy is constituted in space over time. The article sets out with a short overview of the colonial heritage of copyright, followed by a discussion of the re-contextualisation of copyright within the structures of international trade relations in the 1990s, moving on to discuss how this positioned piracy within a postcolonial order of power. It concludes with a brief discussion of how piracy has become an integrated part of everyday life in contemporary, postcolonial cities and how this development reflects piracy's role in the process of late capitalist globalisation.

In June 2011 ACSIS arranged its fourth biennial conference on cultural research, this time on the subject “Current Issues in European Cultural Studies”. The conference provided an updated inventory of main issues in European cultural studies today, covering cross-European topics and trends as well as regional developments in East, West, South, North and Central Europé. The program had three main levels. First, a series of plenary sessions dealt with selected key current issues for cultural studies that partly connected to European perspectives and partly reached beyond this geographic scope. Second, a set of spotlight sessions opened up for presentations and debates on the state of cultural studies in different regions of Europé, leading up to a final plenary discussing whether EU’s motto “united in diversity” is also applicable to European cultural studies. Finally, about 200 cultural studies scholars from all over the world came together to present their own research in more than 30 parallel sessions. You can find the details on the participants in the Statistics for 2011 and if you really like figures you find statistics for all conferences in Statistics 2005-2011. The conference was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Wenner-Gren Foundations, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Linköping University and the City of Norrköping.

”Inter: A European Cultural Studies Conference in Sweden” took place in Norrköping, Sweden, 11–13 June, 2007. It was organised by the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS), Linköping University’s national centre for interdisciplinary and transnational networking in this research field. Some 240 scholars participated from many parts of the world, with papers in almost 50 sessions, covering a wide range of subfields of cultural studies today. The plenary sessions focused on three main directions of border-crossing in late modern culture and cultural research. (1) Geographical relations between countries, particularly within Europe. (2) Historical interfaces between past and present, in processes of culturalisation whereby cultural aspect appear to become increasingly important and the past is put to use. (3) Interdisciplinary links between areas of research.