Full Panel
Panelists
Martin Zeilinger, David Meurer, Justin Stephenson
Biographies
Martin Zeilinger is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at York University’s Graduate Program in Communication and Culture, working on digital remix cultures and the cultural impact of intellectual property regimes.
David Meurer is a doctoral candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities in Toronto, Canada. His research draws together theories of information society, network culture and electronic literature, authorship, and intellectual property, and digital archives.
Justin Stephenson is a graduate from York University’s Graduate Program in Communication and Culture, and Senior Creative Director at Trace Pictures in Toronto. His academic interests concern media translation and center on issues arising from a film project based on the writing of Canadian poet BpNichol.
Panel Description
This panel brings together three perspectives on the restrictions imposed by intellectual property regimes on creative digital practices that are based on copying, sharing, and reusing. The panel explores how the legal concept of fair dealing – which exempts certain practices from copyright regulations – can be dynamically invocated in theory and practice to legitimize many copying activities. Many of the digital technologies that frame current creative practices and critical reflection in the arts, education, and cultural theory are based on techniques of copying, reusing, sharing, and collaboration. This pertains to mash-up parodies and sample-based forms of creative expression as much as to collaborative teaching projects, open source programming, open access publishing, and new forms of born-digital political organizations. For creators, educators, and critics alike, such digital technologies hold enormous potential for democratized, open exchange and creativity. Yet, they often serve primarily to throw troublesome intellectual property issues into stark relief.
Martin Zeilinger will introduce the concept of ‘dynamic fair dealing,’ contextualize it in current socio-legal scholarship, and outline the potential it carries to legitimize and facilitate the practices of creators, educators, activists, and everyday digital practitioners. The negative impact of intellectual property regimes can be detrimental for creative and critical expression, particularly when the practices in question are not undertaken for commercial purposes but in order to experiment, explore, and rethink. Whether within the law or in its shadow, it is therefore important to establish sites and techniques that allow artists, activists, educators, and students to freely integrate powerful digital technologies into their practices of experimental creating, learning, teaching, researching, or political expression without fear of censorship-by-law.
Copyright Dramas: Theatre Archives and Collections Online
In his presentation, socio-legal researcher David Meurer argues that Canadian copyright law is increasingly put it into direct conflict with the mandates of digital archives, which are obliged to make materials broadly accessible to the Canadian public. Using case studies of digital collections of Canadian theatre materials, Meurer’s chief concern is that the current discourse around copyright pits users against the creators and owners of cultural materials, with the result that public institutions such as libraries and archives, which ideally should mediate and facilitate access to cultural materials, are given no leverage or voice in public dialogue. Observing the recent development of a legally shaped cultural landscape that does not allow for the creation and dissemination of precisely the kinds of cultural archives most desired by students, researchers, and artists, Meurer concludes that controls on educational and not-for- profit uses of cultural materials need to be loosened in order to allow publicly held material to be made available for activities in the public interest. As an example of this effort, Meurer discusses the arts content management software Artmob, which is designed to enable dynamic and fair dealings between creators and users.
Remixing bpNichol: ‘Direct Dealing’ and Recombinatory Art Practices
Filmmaker and digital media designer Justin Stephenson reflects on his experience with handling permissions while constructing a digital video project based on the creative work of famous Canadian experimental poet bpNichol. Recounting details of personal negotiations with the rights holders of the materials used, he proposes dynamic fair dealing as an alternatives to the formal securing of licenses and the conscious practicing of infringement. This approach is based on respectful deliberations with creators (and their estates) about the intentions, desires, and perspectives of the original author as well as those of the creator who seeks to copy and reuse the material. Stephenson suggests that “direct dealing,” so easily facilitated by digital technology, can be quite effective in enabling consensual, fair access to protected cultural expressions. Stephenson also explores how and why the possibility of such negotiations remains largely invisible to the institutions managing copyright and forge cultural policy for Canadians.
Exploring examples from visual and sound-based remix culture, higher education, digital publishing, and digital media art, this panel surveys practices of creative and critical production that already inhabit these two sites – with the hope of inspiring HASTAC members to reflect on how IP regimes impact their own practices and to reflect on how they can counter this impact.