The Copyright Dispute: How New Transnational Actors and Standards Challenge Established International Control Regimes

Sigrid Quack and Leonhard Dobusch, Freie Universität Berlin

 
In light of the growing economic importance of knowledge and of the technological change brought about by the Internet, regulating property and usage rights to intangible goods has become an increasingly contentious transnational issue. Recently, transnational counter-movements by non-governmental actors (such as NGOs) have emerged that propagate private standards of licensing with more generous rights of use. They criticize the asymmetrically restrictive copyright provisions that neglect the character of intellectual property as collective property and deplore the unused potential of current information and communication technologies to produce and distribute digitized goods. From the perspective of transnational institution-building, questions arise as to whether and how private forms of regulation can prevail, either in addition to or in place of established regulation, and what types of transnational organization can be involved. These questions will be addressed using the "Creative Commons" project as a case study. "Creative Commons" seeks to offer a multifaceted, internationally standardized array of alternative copyright licenses. A further goal of the project is to explore whether social movement and civil society actors' demands for a modernization of protection and usage rights spill over into European and international negotiations regarding copyright regulation. Project duration: March 2007 to December 2013.
 
Dobusch, Leonhard/Sigrid Quack, 2010: Epistemic Communities and Social Movements: Transnational Dynamics in the Case of Creative Commons. In: Marie-Laure Djelic/Sigrid Quack (eds.), Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 226-252.
 
Dobusch, Leonhard /Sigrid Quack, 2011: Interorganisationale Netzwerke und digitale Gemeinschaften: Von Beiträgen zu Beteiligung? Managementforschung, 21, 171-213.
 
Dobusch, Leonhard/Sigrid Quack, 2012: Framing Standards, Mobilizing Users: Copyright versus Fair Use in Transnational Regulation. Review of International Political Economy (forthcoming). DOI:10.1080/09692290.2012.662909
 

 

 
Blog on Copyright Regulation
 
More ...