Culture: Global changes in production and consumption
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Deutsch: [Kultur: Globaler Wandel in Produktion und Konsum | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.12_Kultur_Globaler_Wandel_in_Produktion_und_Konsum?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20120620]
The Green MEPs Eva Lichtenberger, Sandrine Bélier and Helga Trüpel
hosted an event on 7 June 2012 in the European Parliament on the global
changes in production and consumption of cultural goods.
The first speaker at the event was Frédéric Martel, writer, journalist,
researcher and book critic who worked at the French Embassy in Boston as
head of the French cultural and academic services. The mutation is due
to two different phenomena: globalisation and digitalisation. The
novelty is that the developing countries are taking part in those
phenomena and they have to adapt to both globalisation and
digitalisation at the same time. The approach to digitalisation is
different in Europe from that in the developing countries. In Europe the
content industries are adopting a defensive behaviour against
digitalisation, while in the developing countries they see it as an
opportunity. The creative industry is changing, but one should not
forget that the big American studios also finance small independent
studios. A new debate on diversity is appearing because even though
there is globalisation, the cultural issues stay national. Countries
like Brazil do not have the capacity to function by the US and European
system of copyright.
The second panellist was Philippe Aigrain, co-funder of la Quadrature du
Net. He introduced his speech by defending the legalisation of file
sharing and the necessity to find a new financing system – such as a
global license. But he focused his speech on looking at the reality of
the cultural production and the example of creative writing as a new
production opportunity. Today, the non-market practices of individuals
are playing an important role even more than the selling and licensing
of content, he said. Internet should not be seen as a distribution
channel but a a place of cultural, creative and expressive activities.
Internet is a creation tool. There is a huge textual production with
blogs, microblogs and so on, that allow fair trade publishing favouring
both authors and readers. It is however true that this cannot apply to
all media.
The last speaker was Lucy Montgomery, from Queensland University of
Technology (Australia). She spoke about the Chinese market. New models
are emerging in China. She took the examples of music, film and fashion
in which even though there is piracy and counterfeit, the market is
booming and people consume a lot, but differently. Getting completely
rid of copyright is a crazy idea, but there is a necessity to understand
the co-evolution of innovation and copyright which creates a complex
eco-system.
Webpage of the event (7.06.2012)
http://www.greens-efa.eu/global-changes-in-the-production-and-consumption-of-culture-7184.html
Recorded stream of the event (7.06.2012)
http://greenmediabox.eu/archive/2012/06/07/culture/
(Contribution by Elena Cantello – EDRi intern)