Transnational Copyright: Organization, Mobilization, and Law

Fourth Conference on Economic Sociology and Political Economy
June 12-15, 2010 | Villa Vigoni
 

Aim of the Conference

The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from the fields of law, social sciences, organizational and cultural studies to discuss the role of transnational copyright regulation in the production and use of cultural goods in contemporary societies. The growing economic and social importance of cultural goods in combination with new technological possibilities for producing, using and distributing such goods on a global scale has raised a number of controversies about the balance of private ownership and public access that will be investigated more deeply in the contributions to this conference.
 
While issues of intellectual property, and more specifically of copyright, are often treated exclusively as a matter of legislation, legal theorizing or legal instruments, this conference will take a broader perspective on copyrights as a bundle of social, cultural and legal action rules and rights. These rules and rights reflect roles, relationships and practices existing in different fields of cultural production, various societies and their transnational and global interconnections. They are shaped by social contests, negotiations and struggles about defining the balance between private ownership and public domain. Thus, in order to understand ongoing developments in the field of cultural production and copyright regulation we suggest investigating issues such as

• the economic, organizational and political background of different approaches to regulating access to intellectual goods, ranging from copyright extension, digital rights management to "copyleft" licenses (including Creative Commons)
• the organizational and political effectiveness of private and public actors' strategies in the pursuing different regulatory approaches
• the role of user-producers of content and internet communities in regulating access to intellectual goods
• envisaged solutions to potential conflicts between rights for public access to intellectual goods and the protection of creators’ rights
• implications of "copyright" and "copyleft" regulation for social participation and socio-economic innovation.

While copyright regulation is global in scope, it is often national and local in its implementation. It is also often influenced by local and national developments: Interest coalitions for or against existing copyright regulation are embedded in specific socio-economic and political settings, as is the organization of alternative models of open content. Because it is the interaction between actors from these different settings that shapes global copyright regulation, the conference will look closely at local-global interactions in the multi-level governance of copyright. More specifically, it aims to promote an interdisciplinary and cross-national dialogue between scholars from Germany, Italy, other European countries and the United States and advance debate in this highly relevant public policy field.
 

 

Organization and contact

Leonhard Dobusch
Freie Universität Berlin

Phone +49 030 838-56274
 
Sigrid Quack
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Phone +49 221 2767-152
 
Christian Weiland
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Phone +49 221 2767-250