[JoPP-Public] Issue #6 Disruption and the Law

[Steve Collins]

Hi Everyone

I'd like to announce the release of issue #6 of the Journal of Peer
Production.

Disruption and the Law was edited by Angela Daly (Swinburne University of
Technology and European University Institute) and myself (Macquarie
University). Please distribute across your networks.

http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-6-disruption-and-the-law/

The disruption caused by new technologies and non-conventional methods of
organisation – from a Western perspective at least – have posed challenges
for the law, confronting regulators with the need to balance justice and an
appreciation of new realities with powerful interests and existing
paradigms. Experience from the “disruptions” of the late twentieth century
has shown that the response from incumbent industries can lead to a period
of intense litigation and lobbying for laws that will maintain the status
quo. For example, following its “Napster moment”, the music industry fought
to maintain its grip on distribution channels through increased copyright
enforcement and the longer copyright terms it managed to extract from the
legislative process. The newspaper industry has similarly seen its
historical revenue stream of classified ads disrupted by more efficient
online listings, and responded to its own failure to capitalise on online
advertising by launching legal campaigns against Google News in various
European countries.

Though the law as it stands may not be well-equipped to deal with
disruptive episodes, the technological innovations of the last twenty years
have created an environment that generates disruption. The Internet, the
Web and networked personal computers have converged into the ubiquitous
post-PC media device, leaving twentieth century paradigms of production,
consumption and distribution, particularly in the Western world, under
considerable threat. The latest technology to be added to this group of
disruptive innovations may be 3D printing, which in recent times has become
increasingly available and accessible to users in developed economies,
whilst the manufacturing capacity of 3D printers has dramatically grown.
Although current offerings on the market are far from a Star Trek-like
“replicator”, the spectre of disruption has once again arrived with the
prospect of 3D printed guns inspiring a moral panic and raising questions
of gun control, regulation, jurisdiction and effective control. In
addition, 3D printing raises a number of issues regarding intellectual
property, going far beyond the copyright problems that file-sharing brought
about due to its production of physical objects.

It is against this backdrop that we present this special issue of the
Journal of Peer Production, comprising six peer-reviewed papers and one
discussion paper covering an array of diverse issues implicated by the
emergence of new production and distribution technologies, associated peer
practices and tensions with legal and de facto regulatory frameworks.
best
steve

--
*Dr Steve Collins*
Senior Lecturer in Multimedia
Program Director / BA-Media / Bachelor Marketing and Media
Department of Media, Music, Communication & Cultural Studies
Macquarie University

P: (02) 9850 2165
W: http://bit.ly/122QivW
L: Y3A 191D
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/jopp-public/attachments/20150121/a16bce14/attachment.htm