Cultural consumers and copyright

Citation

Lee, H.-K. (2012), "Cultural consumers and copyright", Arts Marketing: An International Journal, Vol. 2 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/am.2012.52002baa.002

Cultural consumers and copyright

Cultural consumers and copyright

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Arts Marketing: An International Journal, Volume 2, Issue 2.

This special issue is intended to reflectively rethink copyright from the perspective of cultural consumers and their consumption practice. Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute a work of artistic creation, rights to create derivative works based on the copyrighted work and rights to public performance, display and to communicating the copyright work to the public. The rapid development of digital technologies and online communications brings the issue of copyright to the fore of discussion of cultural business in many different areas. Policy makers and cultural industries hold that copyright is an effective incentive and reward for the creativity of the author (or the producer) and believe that the viability of the industries depends on generating and exploiting copyright. Within this framework, consumers of copyrighted works appear to be generalized as either users (mainly paying audience) or copyright infringers (with the exception of those who reproduce and distribute copyrighted materials without permission of copyright holders but under the conditions specified as fair use or fair dealing by law). The above view has been critically examined by researchers who look into the historical and cultural specificities of copyright as a modern, western institution embedded in the individualistic view of artist and artistic creation (Frith and Marshall, 2004) and those who argue for more balance between the public domain and copyright (Lessig, 2004). However, the academic discussion of copyright seems more interested in cultural production than consumption, reflecting the fact that copyright, as an idea, law and practice, is concerned primarily with authors. The existing literature on consumers’ attitudes toward copyright and their involvement in infringing activities mainly concentrate on online file-sharing of music and film. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the literature reveals the demographic characteristics of file-sharers, their motivations and justification, or the infringement's impacts on the industry (e.g. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, 2007). Nevertheless, there still exists a need for more in-depth investigation into the relations between cultural consumers and copyright: for example, copyright law and policy's perception of cultural consumers, consumers’ understanding of copyright and the roles of copyright in determining the relationship between cultural consumers and producers.

Contributors to this special issue believe that enquires into copyright from the consumer's perspective fits nicely within the studies of cultural consumption and marketing. First, this is because using a copyrighted product and/or reproducing/sharing of it is a part of cultural consumers’ everyday practice. Their dealing with copyright may be a key element of their experience of the product or brand itself and, at the collective level, an important part of consumer culture. Their view of copyright may be fragmented but it still constitutes a crucial clue to our understanding of cultural consumers. Second, an investigation of copyright as idea, policy and practice would be a good way to reflectively review the prevailing theorization of cultural consumers as “participatory consumers,” “pro-sumers” and “co-creators.” Under the current legal and policy framework in advanced economies, copyright ownership is a key criterion that distinguishes cultural producers (creators) from consumers (users). How much the framework is adaptive to the rise of varying forms of participatory consumption is one thing to deliberate; how and how far consumers’ creation and contribution can be recognized under the current system of copyright is another thing to observe. Third, we are witnessing that a lack of copyright protection and free-sharing has double edges: this could lead to innovative ideas, products and business models; but it also means that cultural companies lose control over their commodities. In short, examining the dynamics in consumer practice in and out of the copyright framework is important to expand and deepen our knowledge of cultural consumption today and its implications for cultural business and marketing.

This special issue aims at addressing some of the above issues. In particular, it focusses on the following themes: first, roles of consumers as active agencies who develop perspective and principles of their own consumption behavior that involve infringing copyright or purchasing copyrighted works; second, consumer creativity outside copyright framework as a source of innovation and new products; and finally, consumers who voluntarily take the roles of cultural intermediaries outside the existing copyright framework. Although the papers in this special issue look at the experiences of different cultural industries from different national and international contexts, they all encourage us to challenge the binary view that opposes consumer against creators and free access/sharing against the business of cultural industries.

Jonas Andersson's paper attends to file-sharers’ partial views of their surroundings, activity and its effect on cultural industries from the Swedish context. Distancing itself from those which celebrate file-sharing as consumer movement or critique them as eroding the industries’ revenue, the paper discusses that file-sharers’ limited view of their practice is grounded on their civic and liberal approach to copyright and calls for more reflexivity. At the same time, it discovers that file-sharers’ views are a social construction where file-sharing can be reconciled with individual artists as long as they are not associated with the commercial reasoning of the industries.

Xiang Ren and Lucy Montgomery's paper draws our attention to consumer-driven innovation that occurs in spite (or because) of a lack of copyright protection. It explains such innovation can create a new business opportunity using a case study of Chinese online literature production. It also deliberates the organizational and structural aspects of the new business, especially the fact that the transformation of consumer-led innovation to a business takes place within the concentrated industry structure dominated by a small number of online publishers.

Hye-Kyung Lee's paper on manga scanlators looks into a particular type of participatory consumers: those who freely borrow, translate, edit and disseminating cultural products from overseas. Transferring trans-linguistic intermediary work, which used to be undertaken by local licensees, to the realm of fandom, they make the licensing system obsolete. The paper argues that the key issue for the industries is not simply about free-sharing but about the rise of cultural consumers as a new breed of cultural intermediaries who operate beyond the existing copyright regulation and create their own (missing) markets.

The issue of consumer agency and reflexivity is highlighted by Linda Brennan and Theresa Savage's paper from a perspective of a rather traditional type of consumer who purchases copyrighted products. Within the context of the tourism industry, they question who owns copyright in souvenirs based on the traditional and collective culture of aboriginal communities. The paper argues both producers and consumers of souvenirs should have the capacity to make ethical decisions acknowledging and respecting the souvenirs’ cultural and artistic roots in the aboriginal communities.

Jade Tillery's short Creative insights piece explains the publishing industry's response to the rise of participatory consumption and social networking. The examples in this paper vividly illustrate how the encouragement of free access and involvement of consumers can lead to innovations in both production and marketing of books.

Finally, Nilanjana Sensarkar's review of Aaron Schwabach's book Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection (2011) points out the ambiguity in deciding how far the story and character elements of a literary work can be copyright protected and whether fan fiction can be viewed as fair dealing and even be protected as copyright work. Beyond the technical aspects of copyright, the review shows the difficulty in protecting creative expression and its element as an exclusive property.

Hye-Kyung LeeGuest Editor