Join us for the next in our 2019-2020 series of Public Lectures:

Intellectual Property “terms of trade”: The challenges for entertainment businesses in the emerging platform economy

Naysun Alae-Carew, Managing Director, Blazing Griffin

Humanities Lecture Theatre, Main Building,
University of Glasgow
Wednesday 13 November 2019 17:30-19:00

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Read more in: Reassessing the Challenge of the Digital (in M. Van Eechoud ed. The Work of Authorship, 2014, p.p.175-214)

CREATe was delighted to contribute, for the second year running, to Questlab Network, a development programme for digital artists funded by Arts Council England held at Studio Wayne McGregor’s ‘Here East’ hub, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London in November 2019. The programme brought together dance artists and creative technologists, with a view to exploring the potential of digital technology to enhance artistic creativity and to stimulate innovation in artistic practices, resulting in the delivery of new creative projects throughout the country. The collaborative nature of digital artworks – drawing together artists, performers, and technologists (like computer programmers) – gives rise to questions about authorship and ownership. Dr Elena Cooper of CREATe contributed to the programme with a seminar delivered to artists and technologists, drawing on case studies from her qualitative empirical work about copyright, authorship and collaboration in the digital arts (published as Reassessing the Challenge of the Digital in M. Van Eechoud ed. The Work of Authorship, 2014, p.p.175-214). Dr Cooper’s research exposes varying concepts of authorship and ownership in the digital arts and, in the seminar, those case studies served as models for the ways in which the programme’s participants could think about authorship and ownership of their own collaborative work, as well as how to structure copyright agreements in practice. More about the programme, including a full list of participants, can be found here: https://waynemcgregor.com/questlab-network

This is part of a series of summary posts rounding-up new entries to the Copyright Evidence Wiki (organised thematically). As part of CREATe’s workstream for the AHRC Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, the Wiki catalogues empirical studies on copyright. This month, we summarise new featured studies on: Piracy, Intermediary Liability, Open Access/Open Science and Performers’ Rights.

Piracy:

Overall, piracy is declining, according to a study by Quintais and Poort (2019). Following the Global Online Piracy Study (Poort et al. (2018)), this study looks to “How Markets– Not Enforcement – Drive Down Copyright Infringement”. In particular, the study finds little evidence of sales displacement caused by piracy, which is somewhat offset by increasing sales in e.g. live concerts and cinema. Continue reading →

Guest post by Prof. UAM dr hab. Katarzyna Klafkowska-Waśniowska, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.

How responsible should I be -slajdy blogpost

Responsibility has become one of the main principles of the European approach in regulating online platform services. The development of a regulatory framework for new media services and balancing the interests of rightholders and service providers has long been at the center of my research.  Therefore, together with Prof. Katja Weckström Lindroos (University of Eastern Finland), Prof. Maria Lilla Montagnani (Bocconi University) and an international team of experts we have started a project focusing on structuring the role of platforms in preserving fundamental values including freedom of expression.

Initial findings and possibilities of developing the concept of responsible users, whose contribution is an essential element of platform environment, were presented during a seminar at CREATe, which I found to be a perfect place to discuss complex platform-user relations, and consult some of the ideas for the project. Continue reading →

CREATe presents the seventh entry in our series of working papers released in 2019: “Know Your Rights: What can you do when your copyright is infringed?” by Elena Cooper (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, CREATe) and Sheona Burrow (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CREATe).

Following on from Working Paper 2018/02 (Cooper and Burrow, Photographic Copyright and the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in Historical Perspective, Legal Studies, March 2019, 143-165), this paper analyses 21 judgments concerning the infringement of photographic copyright, delivered by the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Small Claims Track (the IPEC SCT) in the first three years of its operation (October 2012-December 2015). The IPEC SCT is part of the High Court of England and Wales, with jurisdiction to hear intellectual property claims worth under £10,000, and the majority of claims commenced during this three year period were brought by freelance professional photographers (or their agents) for the infringement of photographic copyright. The paper addresses the significance of these judgments, which are not publicly available, for photographers contemplating court-action in the IPEC SCT.

The paper was initially published in the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society (which can be found at http://rps.org/new-journal), May 2019.

The full paper can be downloaded here.

CREATe presents the sixth entry in our series of working papers released in 2019: “Empirical Approaches to Intermediary Liability” by Kris Erickson (Associate Professor in Media and Communication, University of Leeds) and Martin Kretschmer (Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of CREATe Centre, University of Glasgow).

This paper considers what empirical evidence may contribute to the debates around online intermediary liability. What do we need to know in order to frame the liability of intermediaries and what does the relationship between theory and empirics imply for the wider issue of platform regulation? We evaluate the performance of so-called intermediary liability safe harbours, which have been operating for two decades in multiple jurisdictions. Continue reading →

CREATe, the UK Copyright & Creative Economy Centre at the University of Glasgow, is organising three days of events, public lectures and workshops (the CREATe Symposium 2019) to mark the start of a number of ambitious projects (as well as the continuation of others!) that will occupy us for the next several years. In recognising the achievements of the many researchers who have contributed to CREATe projects it will set the agenda for meeting future challenges that the creative economy will face in an era of platform economy, algorithmic regulation, open science, new legislative proposals, copyright education, and the enduring value of copyright history.

One of the new pillars of CREATe research is the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC) which will provide independent research and authoritative recommendations to aid the development of policies for the UK’s creative industries. CREATe’s role in the centre (led by Profs. Martin Kretschmer and Philip Schlesinger) focuses on the regulation of the platform economy and will explore crucial questions for the creative industries such as their arguable transition towards a data intensive model, the control of data structures in the creative process and the role that traditional cultural intermediaries may continue to play in this context. Complementing this work, CREATe is also partner in another AHRC funded project dedicated to “Improving Deliberation, Improving Copyright“ led by Dr Lee Edwards (PI, LSE) and Dr Giles Moss (Co-I, University of Leeds) which focuses on developing more effective consultation processes for copyright policy issues.

Platform regulation has also been at the centre of the debate on the recently adopted Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. CREATe has played a crucial role in collecting an evidence base that has been instrumental to the improvement of earlier versions of the Directive. During CREATe’s first public lecture of 2019 Catherine Stihler (CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation and former MEP) will reflect on the making of EU copyright law. Profs. Giorgio Fazio and Rebecca Giblin will offer academic responses to an already intriguing topic.

From historical controversies to contemporary debates the first day of the Symposium will bring together law and non-law researchers to the copyright history roundtable to explore the legal regulation of art, news and markets in the nineteenth century and their continuing relevance to current policy. This research falls within CREATe’s new research on the public sphere and markets including the Carnegie Trust funded project on copyright and freedom of panorama led by Dr Marta Iljadica.

But how to celebrate the UK copyright centre without the British Literary and Artistic Copyright Association? We are thankful to BLACA for co-hosting a lecture at the Hunterian on “Whistler, Faed and Painting Copyright in the Nineteenth Century”. The Whistler painting ‘Portrait of Lady Eden’ will be brought out of store especially for this talk to be shown in public for the first time. As part of this special occasion, Dr Elena Cooper (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow) will connect UK copyright history to two paintings with links to Scotland: ‘Brown and Gold: Portrait of Lady Eden’ by James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) and ‘Home and the Homeless’ by Thomas Faed (1826-1900).

An ongoing project, and doubtlessly one of the most meaningful contributions of CREATe to evidence-based policy, the Copyright Evidence Wiki is a key to much of CREATe’s future work. To celebrate this success, prior to the (closed) Editorial Board meeting, Associate Prof. Joost Poort will offer a public address on a new empirical study on Global online piracy. In a similar fashion, we will showcase CREATe’s www.copyrightuser.org, the UK’s most visited guidance portal on copyright (led by Bartolomeo Meletti).

From empirical to normative: Open Science can be defined as a model of doing science that relies on the concept of openness throughout its life cycle. This includes different elements such as open access to publications and data (both research- and meta-data), as well as open methodologies, free and open source software and much more. Some of CREATe’s work on Open Science will be presented during the “Information, (research) data and open science” workshop led by Dr Thomas Margoni. In addition, CREATe is working with European partners on a new collaborative project about rethinking copyright law in the context of diversity and the democratization of culture (more information coming soon).

Finally, and of vital importance for an event that looks to the future, one of the most inspiring events of the Symposium is the “emerging researchers workshop” led by Amy Thomas, which will present CREATe’s new generation of PhD candidates and early career researchers via quick-fire introductions of their current work.

Three days of intense cultural, intellectual and social activity to mark the start of the next phase of CREATe’s research programme. We’d love to see you at one or all of the events – the sign up details are in the programme. Join us!

The CREATe team
School of Law
Creative Economies beacon
University of Glasgow