The digital environment has created something approaching a monopoly for digital entrepreneurs and technology corporations, at the expense of those who create works. The distribution of intellectual and creative content puts billions into hands of digital entrepreneurs while most artists and creators can no longer benefit economically from their work. This is not fair, and it is not what copyright, which is recognized as a human right under Article 27 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was intended to achieve.
Krisellen Maloney & Janice T. Pilch, Comments of Rutgers University Libraries in Response to Notice of Inquiry Concerning Copyright Protection for Certain Visual Works, July 23, 2015. 1All comments available here.
Is Amazon Creating a Cultural Monopoly? — A group of authors has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the online retailer, arguing that its practices “squeeze publishers, which makes them more risk-averse in deciding which books to publish. As a result, they claim, publishers have been ‘dropping some midlist authors and not publishing certain riskier books, effectively silencing many voices.’ And this is bad not only for the non-famous writers who go unpublished, but for their would-be readers, who are denied the ability to hear those voices.”
Are Creators Really Thriving in the Digital Age? Doesn’t Look Like It — There were a number of pieces responding to a New York Times Magazine article claiming that a “creative apocalypse” had been predicted following Napster, but that, in fact, things were never better for creators. Here’s Rob Levine’s take.
A visual journey through the most loved and hated TV series finales — Or, more precisely, how much did the IMDB rating of a series finale differ from the average IMDB rating of all its episodes? Still, an interesting chart.
Creative Destruction and Disruptive Creation — “Content creators have always leveraged technology to tell better stories. Indeed, the history of Hollywood is perhaps best described as ‘disruptive creation.'”
The Most Popular YouTube Videos of All Time — Look at all that user-generated content.
References
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