CREATe Public Lecture report: ‘Digital Disintermediation and Efficiency in the Market for Ideas’

Posted on March 26, 2020 by

Report by Kenny Barr (Research Associate in School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow)

On 5th February, Dr Christian Peukert (Católica-Lisbon/ETH Zurich) gave a CREATe Public Lecture on the effects of digitalisation in the book publishing industry. This was part of the work stream on Intellectual Property and Business Models of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC).

A CREATe Fellow from a disciplinary background of applied economics, Christian is interested in questions related to how digital technologies affect firms, consumers and markets, particularly from an innovation perspective. In tackling some of these issues in the contemporary book publishing realm, the talk touched on many themes that permeate the discourse around creative production and copyright markets including: primary creators operating on the margins of the mainstream industries; barriers to entry; the role of gatekeepers; and democratisation.

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Now Available: Platform Regulation Project Resource Page

Posted on March 23, 2020 by

Following the launch of the Platform Regulation project (as part of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre PEC), we have now made available a new resource page for the project, which will be updated throughout its duration. On the page you will find an overview of the project, including some of the findings from the UK mapping study. The page also gives a report of the launch event on 26 February 2020 at BIICL in London, including the panel response and discussion with representatives from Ofcom, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Intellectual Property Office and the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. You can find the resource page here.

The first phase of the Platform Regulation project provides an empirical mapping of the UK regulatory landscape. With the emergence of platforms as a distinct new regulatory object, what are the UK’s options in this rapidly evolving landscape? In the context of international developments – such as the anticipated EU Digital Services Act, this project maps the statutory basis and duties of key UK regulators and looks ahead to potential new responsibilities. The research team are – Prof. Martin Kretschmer, Prof. Philip Schlesinger and Dr Ula Furgal (from research centres CREATe and CCPR). The project is funded within the research programme of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC).

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Report: AI and Audiovisual Archives Event

Posted on March 19, 2020 by

This is a report by Thomas Margoni and Bartolomeo Meletti, of an event organised by Bartolomeo Meletti, jointly Copyright Education Creative Director for CREATe and Copyright Services Delivery Manager of Learning on Screen.

On Friday 14 February 2020, Learning on Screen organised the event AI and Audiovisual Archives, to explore some of the immense opportunities that AI can represent for an organisation that in over 70 years of operations has collected a unique archive of more than 2.2 million audiovisual works (the BoB archive).

The event – held in London and chaired by Bartolomeo Meletti in his capacity as Copyright Services Delivery Manager of Learning on Screen – reflects one of the first major steps taken by Learning on Screen to explore the possibility of making its extensive archive of TV and radio broadcasts available for research purposes.

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Improving deliberation, improving copyright: Can deliberation work in complex contexts?

Posted on March 17, 2020 by

This post by Lee Edwards, Associate Professor at the LSE, and Giles Moss, Associate Professor at the University of Leeds was first published on the LSE Blogs site. It is a companion post to the blog published on the CREATe site about the workshop that took place during the CREATe Symposium in October 2019.

In the project ‘Improving Deliberation, Improving Copyright’, a range of copyright stakeholders, including members of the public, are collaborating to produce a set of guidelines for copyright policy consultations. The aim of the collaboration is to improve consultations, in part by more effectively incorporating a variety of stakeholder voices into debates about copyright. Lee Edwards, Associate Professor at the LSE, and Giles Moss, Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, explain the challenges of involving multiple stakeholders, and how to resolve some of them.  

The first part of ‘Improving Deliberation, Improving Copyright’ consisted of 44 stakeholder dialogues, focusing on their experiences of different types of consultations and their insights about what works well and what might be improved in the copyright consultation process. These discussions showed that participants recognised the democratic importance of consultations as a means of gathering evidence to improve policy; assessing support for different policy options; and providing a space where citizens have a voice in the policymaking process.

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Report on AHTV 2020: Exploring documentary filmmakers’ fair practice

Posted on February 18, 2020 by

On 5th February 2020, I attended AHTV 2020, a one-day conference co-organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Edinburgh TV Festival. The event brought together Arts and Humanities academics and TV professionals working in specialist factual programming, to foster relationships and improve understanding between the two.

It was great to hear from leading TV professionals about their research-based projects and the production process behind them. For example, Giulia Clark and Bill Locke from Lion Television explained how they turned research conducted by an international team of scientists – radiocarbon-dated horse manure which proved that Hannibal’s army passed through the Alps in 218 BC – into a documentary film (Hannibal’s Elephant Army: The New Evidence).

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[Event finished] Booking Reminder: Intellectual Property Litigation & Platform Regulation Event in London, 26 February

Posted on February 19, 2020 by
[Event in London, co-hosted with BIICL, now fully booked.] The half-day conference will launch a new project on Platform Regulation, mapping the UK regulatory landscape in a fast evolving global context. The programme also presents new empirical work on Intellectual Property litigation in the UK and EU.

Registration

The event is free. Please book via the BIICL website: https://www.biicl.org/events/11350/new-empirical-research-on-intellectual-property-litigationand-launch-of-platform-regulation-project

This requires as brief registration process first. If you do not wish to register with the BIICL, you may request attendance by writing to Diane McGrattan (CREATe Administrator) directly: Diane.McGrattan@glasgow.ac.uk

For details on speakers and the programme, please see here.

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Book Now: Conference showcasing new empirical research on Intellectual Property Litigation & Platform Regulation

Posted on February 6, 2020 by

As part of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC), CREATe and BIICL are co-hosting a half-day conference to launch a new project on Platform Regulation, mapping the UK regulatory landscape in a fast evolving global context. The programme also presents new empirical work on Intellectual Property litigation in the UK and EU. The event will be convened by CREATe’s Martin Kretschmer on behalf of the PEC.

Event Details

Date: Wednesday 26 February 2020

Time: 15:00 – 19:00 (registration from 14:30) Followed by a drinks reception. Platform Regulation project launch begins at 17:30

Venue: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5JP

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CREATe contributes to Interdisciplinary ‘Brand Biographies’ Workshop, London

Posted on February 12, 2020 by

In January 2020, an interdisciplinary workshop called ‘Brand Biographies’ was held at Birkbeck, University of London, convened by Jose Bellido (University of Kent) and Alain Pottage (Sciences Po, France). Instead of foregrounding legal themes or categories, the Workshop invited papers that focussed on specific historical studies of trade marks and brands, with a view to uncovering the variety of socio-historical or cultural practices which shape brands. Speakers at the event included Lionel Bently, who drew on original archival research to show how the mark SINGER was utilised in the nineteenth century as a powerful right to control distribution and markets for sewing machines, Dev Gangee, who presented on the implications for legal protection of the use of social media to create ‘celebrity’, and Jose Bellido, who drew on archival sources to demonstrate new perspectives on the well-known twentieth century passing off case of McCulloch v. May concerning the children’s radio presenter Uncle Mac. Also contributing was CREATe’s Elena Cooper who presented on the nineteenth century history of the Jaeger trade mark for clothing, uncovering the ways in which Jaeger’s particular branding strategy – tied to the medical ideas of Dr Gustav Jaeger of Stuttgart and the importation of goods from Germany – allows us to shed new light on two aspects of the legal history of trade marks: the relation between trade marks and personality, and the historic idea of trade marks as indicating geographical origin of manufacture. The latter included the story of the high-profile criminal prosecution of Jaeger concerning use of the Jaeger trade mark, brought by the Board of Trade in 1897, for criminal offences under the Merchandise Marks Act 1887, which relates to Dr Cooper’s wider Leverhulme Trust funded project on the history of the criminalisation of intellectual property. Papers were delivered also by Kathy Bowrey (Felix the Cat), David Higgins (the National Mark for eggs), Eva Hemmungs-Wirten (Marie Curie), Luminita Olteanu (Burberry), Andrew Ventimiglia (faith branding), Wendelin Bruhwiler (formatting fungibles?), Tom Johnson and Alain Pottage (merchants’ marks), Hyo Yoon Kang (Steinway), Celia Lury (MyUniversity) and Oren Bracha (brand property from below).

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Lionel Bently – Public Lecture 12 February: Quotation under Copyright Law and the textual paradigm

Posted on February 7, 2020 by

On the 12th of February, CREATe welcomes Lionel Bently to give our third public lecture of the Spring 2020 series. Lionel has worked with CREATe a number of times over recent years, such as on the Copyright History Symposium in 2015, the CREATe Festival in 2016 and the Copyright & Creative Reuse event at the BFI Southbank in 2017.

UK creators and cultural institutions who work with material in copyright will be familiar with the three fair dealing defences given in the UK’s Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988: one for research and private study, another for criticism or review and a third for reporting current events. They will also likely be aware that the US offers a broader scope under their concept of fair use. However, quotations of works in copyright in the UK are permitted under Article 10(1) of the Berne Convention, a right that applies equally to artistic works as to literary quotation – a use to which it has traditionally been limited. Lionel will argue that, properly interpreted, Article 10(1) of the Berne Convention mandates globally a copyright exception for artistic works that is not dissimilar to the US concept of fair use.

Quotation under Copyright Law and the textual paradigm

Wednesday 12 February 2020 17:30 – 1900
The Humanities lecture Theatre, The University of Glasgow

Book here.

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Digital Disintermediation – Public Lecture by Dr Christian Peukert, 5 February 2020

Posted on February 3, 2020 by

CREATe’s public lecture series continues tomorrow, with a lecture by Dr Christian Peukert :

Digital Disintermediation and Efficiency in the Market for Ideas

Wednesday 5 February 2020 17:30 – 19:00
The Humanities Lecture Theatre, The University of Glasgow

Dr Peukert will present a new study on Digital Disintermediation, using data on over 90,000 licence deals for books. Peukert’s research uses innovative empirical methods such as clickstream data, and data scraped from the web that will be of interest to a wide audience.

Abstract: Digital technology has allowed inventors to circumvent intermediaries, which affects licensing outcomes and efficiency in the market for ideas. We study these impacts theoretically and empirically, using data on over 90,000 license deals for books. Identification comes from quasi-experimental variation across product types over time. Consistent with digital self-publishing improving an author’s outside option, authors get more favorable license deals. In addition, ex-ante license fees reflect ex-post demand more accurately. This is consistent with additional entry generating more information. Such improvements can have large impacts on welfare in any markets in which product appeal is difficult to predict.

Christian Peukert is Assistant Professor for Information Systems at Católica-Lisbon and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Law and Economics at ETH Zurich. Christian is generally interested in questions related to how digital technologies affect firms, consumers and markets, especially from an innovation perspective. Before his academic career, Christian co-founded a record label that specialises in rap music.

All CREATe public lectures are free: book here.

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