Amateur Media : Social, cultural and legal perspectives

257 Pages·2013·2.64 MB·English

by  Hunter

Amateur Media
The rise of Web 2.0 has pushed the amateur to the forefront of public discourse,
public policy and media scholarship. Typically non-salaried, non-specialist and
untrained in media production, amateur producers are now seen as key drivers of the
creative economy. But how do the activities of citizen journalists, fan fiction writers
and bedroom musicians connect with longer traditions of extra-institutional media
production?
This edited collection provides a much-needed interdisciplinary contextualisation of
amateur media before and after Web 2.0. Surveying the institutional, economic and
legalconstructionoftheamateurmediaproducerviaaseriesofcasestudies,itfeatures
contributions from experts in the fields of law, economics and media studies. Each
section ofthebookcontainsadetailedcasestudy onaselectedtopic,followedbytwo
further pieces providing additional analysis and commentary. Using an extraordinary
array of case studies and examples, from YouTube to online games, from subtitling
communities to reality TV, the book is neither a celebration of amateur production
nor a denunciation of the demise of professional media industries. Rather, this book
presentsacriticaldialogueacrosslaw and the humanities, exploring the dynamic ten-
sions and interdependencies between amateur and professional creative production.
This book will appeal to both academics and students of intellectual property and
media law, as well as to scholars and students of economics, media, cultural and
internet studies.
DanHunterisaProfessorofLawandDirectoroftheInstituteforInformation Law &
Policy at New York Law School. He is author of Oxford Introduction to US Law:
Intellectual Property,(Oxford University Press,2011).
Ramon Lobato is a postdoctoral fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for
Creative Industries and Innovation at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research,
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. He is the author of Shadow Economies
of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution,(British FilmInstitute/Palgrave,2012).
Megan Richardson isaProfessorofLawandJointDirectoroftheCentreforMediaand
Communications Law at the University of Melbourne. She is co-author, with Julian
Thomas, ofFashioningIntellectualProperty:Exhibition,AdvertisingandthePress,1789–1918,
(Cambridge University Press,2012).
Julian Thomas is Professor of Media and Communications and Director, Swinburne
Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. He is
co-author, with Megan Richardson, of Fashioning Intellectual Property: Exhibition,
Advertising and the Press, 1789–1918,(Cambridge University Press,2012).

Amateur Media
Social, cultural and legal perspectives
Edited by
Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato,
Megan Richardson and Julian Thomas
Firstpublished2013
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2013editorialmatterandselection,DanHunter,RamonLobato,Megan
Richardson,JulianThomas;individualchapters,thecontributors.
TherightofDanHunter,RamonLobato,MeganRichardson,JulianThomastobe
identifiedastheeditorsofthisworkhasbeenassertedbytheminaccordancewith
sections77and78oftheCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilised
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storageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithout
intenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Amateurmedia:social,culturualandlegalperspectives/editedby
DanHunter…[etal.].
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
ISBN978-0-415-78265-4(hardback)--ISBN978-0-203-11202-1(ebook)
1.Socialmedia--Lawandlegislation.2.User-generatedcontent.3.Internet--Law
andlegislation.I.Hunter,Dan,1966-
K564.C6A8352012
302.23'1--dc23
2011052495
ISBN978-0-415-78265-4(hbk)
ISBN978-0-203-11202-1(ebk)
TypesetinGaramond
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Preface xii
PARTI
Economic histories 1
1 Histories of user-generated content: between formal and
informal media economies 3
RAMONLOBATO,JULIANTHOMASANDDANHUNTER
2 Competing myths of informal economies 18
MEGANRICHARDSONANDJAKEGOLDENFEIN
3 Start with the household 27
JOHNQUIGGIN
PARTII
Platform politics 33
4 Amateur creative digital content and proportional commerce 35
STEVENHETCHER
5 YouTube and the formalisation of amateur media 53
JEANBURGESS
6 The relationship between user-generated content and commerce 59
KIMBERLEEWEATHERALL
PARTIII
Amateurs and authenticity 71
7 The manufacture of ‘authentic’ buzz and the legal relations
of MasterChef 73
KATHYBOWREY
vi Contents
8 Harry Potter and the transformation wand: fair use, canonicity
and fan activity 94
DAVIDTAN
9 The simulation of ‘authentic’ buzz: T-Mobile and the
flash-mob dance 103
MARCTRABSKY
PARTIV
Cultural intermediaries 109
10 Prestige and professionalisation at the margins of the
journalistic field: the case of music writers 111
RAMONLOBATOANDLAWSONFLETCHER
11 Swedish subtitling strike called off!: fan-to-fan piracy,
translation and the primacy of authorisation 125
EVAHEMMUNGSWIRTÉN
12 Have amateur media enhanced the possibilities for good
media work? 137
DAVIDHESMONDHALGH
PARTV
Property and play 151
13 Minecraft as Web 2.0: amateur creativity and digital games 153
GREGLASTOWKA
14 Cosplay, creativity and immaterial labours of love 170
MELISSADEZWART
15 Web Zero: the amateur and the indie-game developer 178
CHRISTIANMCCREA
PARTVI
Anonymity, identity and publicity 185
16 Anonymous speech on the internet 187
BRIANMURCHISON
17 The privacy interest in anonymous blogging 208
LISAAUSTIN
18 ‘Privacy’ of social networking texts 215
MEGANRICHARDSONANDJULIANTHOMAS
Select bibliography 222
Index 231
Notes on contributors
Lisa Austin is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University
of Toronto, where she is affiliated with the Centre for Innovation Law and
Policy. She holds a bachelor’s degree from McMaster, and a law and
doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Prior to
joining the faculty, she served as law clerk to Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci
of the Supreme Court of Canada, and she was called to the Bar of Ontario
in 2006. Her research and teaching interests include privacy law and
property law.
Kathy Bowrey isaProfessorandformerlyAssociateDean–Research(2008–11)
in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She
was previously Associate Dean – Research (2006–7) at the Faculty of Law,
University of Technology, Sydney. Her expertise primarily relates to intel-
lectual property, media and information technology regulation, reflecting a
broad range of interests pertaining to socio-legal history, media and cultural
studies and legal theory. She also researches on western laws affecting
indigenous cultural and intellectual property.
Jean BurgessisaSeniorResearchFellowintheCreativeIndustriesFacultyand
DeputyDirector oftheARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries &
Innovation, based at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She
is a co-author of the first research monograph on YouTube – YouTube:
Online Video and Participatory Culture (Polity Press, 2009), also translated
into Polish, Portuguese and Italian; and co-editor of Studying Mobile Media:
Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone (Routledge,
2012). Her current research focuses on methodological innovation in
the context of the changing media ecology, especially the practical and
ethical aspects of the ‘computational turn’ in media and communication
studies.
Melissa de Zwart is an Associate Professor at the Adelaide Law School, the
University of Adelaide, and a Member of the Commonwealth Attorney-
General’s Classification Review Board. Prior to joining academia, she was
Legal Manager at CSIRO, advising upon protection and commercialisation
viii Notes on contributors
of intellectual property. She has provided advice to the EU, UK government
and the OECD on legal issues affecting virtual worlds and online games,
and was a key contributor to the ENISA report Virtual Worlds, Real Money:
Security and Privacy in Massively-Multiplayer Online Games and Social and
Corporate Virtual Worlds. Her key areas of research interest include copyright,
social networking and online communities.
Lawson Fletcher is a postgraduate student at the Institute for Social
Research, Swinburne University, Melbourne, whose research centres on the
aesthetics and textures of cultural technologies, drawing on media theory,
material culture and sound studies. His doctoral thesis examines the
domestic afterlives of older media in the context of obsolescence and
nostalgia.
Jake Goldenfein is a PhD student at the Melbourne Law School’s Centre for
Media and Communications Law and works as a research assistant in
intellectual property, cyberlaw and media theory at the Melbourne Law
School, New York Law School and Swinburne University’s Institute for
Social Research. His current research explores the relationship between
legal and sociological concepts of resistance to surveillance, and law’s role
in formalising those oppositional ideologies.
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén is a Professor in Library and Information Science
(also Associate Professor – ‘Docent’ in Swedish – in Comparative Litera-
ture) at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research is focused on the history,
theory and philosophy of intellectual property and the public domain. She
is the author of No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the
Boundaries of Globalization (2004) and Terms of Use: Negotiating the Jungle of
theIntellectual Commons (2008), bothUniversity ofToronto Press. In2011 she
published a small volume on translation and copyright entitled Cosmopolitan
Copyright: Law and Language in the Translation Zone (Uppsala Universitet).
Her new book project will be on the intellectual properties of Marie Curie
and is funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area).
David Hesmondhalgh is a Professor of Media and Music Industries at the
University of Leeds, where he is Head of the Institute of Communications
Studies and Director of the Media Industries Research Centre. His books
includeCreativeLabour:MediaWorkinThreeCulturalIndustries(co-writtenwith
Sarah Baker, Routledge, 2011), The Cultural Industries (3rd edition, Sage,
2012) and The Media and Social Theory (co-edited with Jason Toynbee,
Routledge, 2008). He is currently leading a UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council-funded project on Cultural Policy in Europe, and writing
a book on music.
Steven Hetcher is a Professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, Nashville,
Tennessee. His research explores fundamental theoretical issues that arise as
courts and scholars attempt to develop a coherent jurisprudence of the
Notes on contributors ix
emerging information economy. In particular, he focuses on copyright and
privacy issues that are increasingly important to individuals as their online
presence becomes a dominant part of their daily lives. His recent scholarship
has included bottom-up explorations of specific issues, including Facebook’s
privacy-related practices and the Google Book Settlement, as well as top-
downtheoreticalanalyses,suchasadefenceoftherejectionofstrictliabilityin
copyright infringement doctrine and the defence of a right of anonymous
online participation.
Dan Hunter is a Professor and Director, Institute for Information Law &
Policy at New York Law School. He is an expert in internet law, intellectual
property, and artificial intelligence and cognitive science models of law. He
regularly publishes on issues dealing with the intersection of computers
and law, including papers dealing with the regulation of virtual worlds, the
use of artificial intelligence in law and high-technology aspects of intellec-
tualproperty.HisresearchhasappearedinjournalssuchastheCalifornia Law
Review, Texas Law Review, William & Mary Law Review and Journal of Legal
Education. He is the author of The Oxford Introductions to US Law: Intellectual
Property,(Oxford University Press, 2011).
Greg Lastowka is a Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law, Camden,
New Jersey, and a co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information
Policy&Law.Hisresearchfocusesprimarilyontheintersectionofintellectual
property and new technologies. He has published many book chapters,
articles and essays exploring the application of legal doctrines such as
copyright, trade mark and computer trespass law to technologies such as
search engines, websites, video games and email. He is the author of Virtual
Justice (Yale University Press, 2010), which explores the legal issues raised
by virtual worlds, video games and other forms of social software. The book
isavailableasafreePDFdownloadofferedunderaCreativeCommonslicence
at http://bit.ly/virtualjustice.
Ramon Lobato is a postdoctoral research fellow with the ARC Centre for
Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation at the Swinburne Institute
for Social Research, Melbourne. His research explores the interactions
between formal and informal media systems. He is the author of Shadow
Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (British Film
Institute/Palgrave, 2012) and essays in Media International Australia,
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Continuum, International Journal of
Communication, Camera Obscura and New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Christian McCrea is Program Director for Games at RMIT University,
Melbourne. He researches digital histories, aesthetics and audiences, and
changing play cultures. Among his published chapters and articles are those
on Starcraft and e-sports cultures, horror videogames and the pleasure of
difficulty, portable game consoles and Pokémon. His current research project
considers the place of game design in the broader changes to the digital