Event Title
The Copyright Policy Paradox: Overcoming Competing Agendas within the Digital Labour Movement
Start Date
18-10-2009 3:00 PM
End Date
18-10-2009 5:00 PM
Description
This paper was presented at Paper Session 6b: Resistance and Activism.
This paper discusses the varying and often disparate approaches that Canadian associations representing intellectual and creative labourers have taken to copyright policy. Copyright policies are important to intellectual and creative workers as they set the framework for their rights and obligations with respect to the works and performances they create, and to the intellectual goods they utilize in their own production processes. Copyright is now in a state of transition as policymakers grapple with the effects that technological, cultural and economic changes have had on established business models and practices in education and in the entertainment and publishing industries. Although the relationship of creators to the fruits of their labour varies in different settings, it is increasingly tenuous. While resulting rights are retained in some situations, in many others the creator is alienated from their rights at the outset, and in yet others they are subsequently assigned away. In comparing the differences in approach to copyright issues taken by different intellectual and creative labour groups, the paper asks what accounts for these disparities, and how they might be ameliorated to the benefit of a progressive politics of digital labour.
The Copyright Policy Paradox: Overcoming Competing Agendas within the Digital Labour Movement
This paper was presented at Paper Session 6b: Resistance and Activism.
This paper discusses the varying and often disparate approaches that Canadian associations representing intellectual and creative labourers have taken to copyright policy. Copyright policies are important to intellectual and creative workers as they set the framework for their rights and obligations with respect to the works and performances they create, and to the intellectual goods they utilize in their own production processes. Copyright is now in a state of transition as policymakers grapple with the effects that technological, cultural and economic changes have had on established business models and practices in education and in the entertainment and publishing industries. Although the relationship of creators to the fruits of their labour varies in different settings, it is increasingly tenuous. While resulting rights are retained in some situations, in many others the creator is alienated from their rights at the outset, and in yet others they are subsequently assigned away. In comparing the differences in approach to copyright issues taken by different intellectual and creative labour groups, the paper asks what accounts for these disparities, and how they might be ameliorated to the benefit of a progressive politics of digital labour.