Is Our Copyright? Legal issues facing virtual cultures

The emergence of a convergence culture and the growing number of online participants has significantly changed the way in which content is now produced. In the virtual world, “artefacts generated are no longer products in a traditional sense” (Bruns(1), p3). Rather, content creation has become a collaborative “act of maintenance and construction” (Bruns, 2007), meaning ‘products’ are “always unfinished, and continually under development” (Bruns(1), p3).

This increased involvement of users in content creation is generating headaches for the legal community. In particular, intellectual property tracking has become an issue as legislation struggles to cover digital content, “which does not obey the laws of traditional physics (Bruns(2), p8). Our copyright laws also have no means of dealing with communal content ownership. The “current model … operates through a difficult meshing of individually held copyright in individual contributions using complex contracts, or through the artifice of creating ‘legal persons’ (companies, organizations) who hold copyrights on behalf of groups of creative practitioners” (Bruns(1), p6). Basically, these laws continue to see content production as a one-way street in which content is a finished product, produced by one person or company (Bruns(2), p8).

This backward thinking causes problems when tyring to deal with collaboratively built sites like Wikipedia. At present the online encyclopaedia contains over 2.3 million articles written in English. As anyone can edit these articles, trying to appoint a single originator to each piece is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

As massively distributed collaborative efforts, like Wikipedia, continue to develop and grow, it is obvious the law must to evolve with them. A new copyright model, “which allows for truly communally held intellectual property” (Bruns(1), p6) needs to come to fruition. These new laws would need to adequately “balance the rights of individual contributors and those of the overall community” (Bruns(2), p8).

As acknowledged by American rapper, MC Lars in his hit song, “Download This Song”, another industry struggling to catch up with technology and the growing number of participatory consumers is the music industry.

Whilst digital formatting and the Internet has significantly transformed the way people produce and consume music, it has also allowed for the growth of illegal downloading. In 2005 alone, almost 20 million songs were illegally downloaded (IFPI Piracy Report 2006, 4). Whilst this statistic may sound damaging, it is important to note that piracy allows for the free and flexible sharing of music within the ‘fair use’ guidelines (guidelines that allow for the use of copyrighted materials for non-commercial and educational uses without the permission of copyright owners) (Gallagher, 2007). Nonetheless, the legal definition of piracy encompasses ‘copyright infringement’. Consequently, digital music listeners are probable pirates as most digital rights management technologies that control access to copyrighted material are stricter in their policies than the ‘fair use’ guidelines (Gallagher, 2007). And, as a result record companies are “sue[ing] little kids [for] downloading hit songs” (MC Lars, “Download This Song”).

In order to attract new prodsuers and keep a hold on existing markets in the future, copyright laws need to be further amended and developed to complement digital industry trends and acknowledge collaborative efforts.

References
(1) Bruns, Dr Axel. "Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation". (http://produsage.org/files/Produsage%20(Creativity%20and%20Cognition%202007).pdf). (pp.1 – 6).

(2) Bruns, Dr Axel. "The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage." (http://produsage.org/files/The%20Future%20Is%20User-Led%20(PerthDAC%202007).pdf (pp.1 – 9).

Bruns, Dr Axel. (2007). “Produsage: A Working Definition”, Produsage.org: Definition, Key Principles, Necessary Preconditions. URL: http://produsage.org/produsage (accessed 10 May, 2008).

Gallagher, R. 2007. Everybody knows that piracy is killing the music business. [Lecture: KCB102].

IFPI (2006) The Recording Industry 2006 Piracy Report: p 4. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/piracy-report2006.pdf (accessed 9 May, 2008).