We are happy to announce a series of online seminars with our early career researchers. During the seminars researchers will have an opportunity to present their work in progress and discuss ideas for future projects with their peers and senior academics. Seminars will be held on Fridays, May through June, 10 – 11am BST. You are warmly invited to join us with your morning coffee (or tea)!

If you are interested to participate in any of the seminars, please contact Diane McGrattan (diane.mcgrattan@glasgow.ac.uk).

18 June, 10 – 11am BST

Magali Eben, Lecturer in Competition Law at CREATe, University of Glasgow

Regulating digital gatekeepers’ power and competition: the times they are a-changing? 

The Proposal for a Digital Markets Act is one of several new regulations and reforms around the world. The current understanding of competition law is being challenged in the process. The proposals go beyond achieving competitive and efficient markets, incorporating limits on the exercise of relational power, ‘fairness’ in commercial relationships, or obligations to ensure the access by smaller companies to downstream markets. Economic democracy concerns are apparent: a mistrust of private economic power (at least as represented by Big Tech) permeates public opinion and academic discourse. In this seminar, Magali will reflect on this apparent shift in views on competition (law).

We are happy to announce a series of online seminars with our early career researchers. During the seminars researchers will have an opportunity to present their work in progress and discuss ideas for future projects with their peers and senior academics. Seminars will be held on Fridays, May through June, 10 – 11am BST. You are warmly invited to join us with your morning coffee (or tea)!

If you are interested to participate in any of the seminars, please contact Diane McGrattan (diane.mcgrattan@glasgow.ac.uk).

25 June, 10 – 11am BST

Amy Thomas, PhD Candidate and Research and Teaching Assistant at CREATe, University of Glasgow

Capturing the ‘indie spirit’ in video game end user licensing agreements

The indie (independent) games market is often framed in opposition to the corporate, profit-driven ethos of the mainstream video games industry. Financial independence from major developers and publishers has generally correlated with more cultural and artistic freedom to be creative. This presentation explores the ways that this oppositional character, the ‘indie spirit’, manifests in the text of video game end user licensing agreements (EULAs). Using critical discourse analysis, I find that indie EULAs differentiate themselves from the dominant discourse of proprietary copyright ownership at both a textual level, and method of distribution. This reveals a contradictory nature. On the one hand, the indie spirit is preserved by showing outward resistance to, and occasional mockery of, the EULA; on the other, indie developers nonetheless rely on that same system to protect their creations.