Asia

Concerted efforts to enforce global intellectual property rights (IPR) continue to focus intensely on the developing countries of East Asia, and China in particular. These efforts have spawned a complex system of legal mechanisms that is still very much in process of evolution, encompassing international and regional conventions, WTO dispute settlements, bilateral and plurilateral treaties, decisions of national courts and regulatory bodies, and a welter of local laws and border controls.

‘Digital economy policy for the creative industries is framed too commonly in terms of refining and strengthening intellectual property rights. As digitalization grows in scope and importance, Lucy Montgomery’s intriguing book shows how the limitations of this narrow approach have become all too apparent, as China’s creative industries are thriving in an ever increasing digital global society because (and not despite) of the fact that their businesses, innovations, skills and markets have grown up with weak copyright enforcement regimes.’

Faculty Seminar Series

Professor Justin O’Connor, Research Capacity Building Professor Tuesday 28th April 12pm-1pm The Hall (Z2-226) CI Precinct QUT Kelvin Grove

Creative labour: emancipation or honey-trap?

Book chapters and articles published in 2008 and 2009

Among the many contentious matters thrown up by the relentless march of economic globalization, those forms of knowledge variously known as 'indigenous' or 'traditional' remain seriously threatened, despite numerous transnational initiatives and highly publicized debate. It is not proving easy to bring these holistic worldviews into accordance with the technical terms and classifications of intellectual property law.

Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific provides a unique insight into the key issues facing copyright law and digital content policy in a networked information world.

For analysts interested in social change the creative industries are a bellwether for the ‘open future’ predicted by Richard E Lee. Current directions in the study of the continuing encounters among culture, economy and politics do not focus so much on struggle, subject-positioning or structure, as on change, disequilibrium, and growth. It does seem to many that the current period is one of indeterminacy between two relatively stable ‘long centuries’ – the existing ‘American’ one and the coming ‘Chinese’ one (Shenkar 2004; Fishman 2004; Rees-Mogg 2005).

This book examines China’s creative economy — and how television, animation, advertising, design, publishing and digital games are reshaping traditional understanding of culture.

Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalisation and combining cultural theory with media industry analysis, Keane, Fung and Moran give a groundbreaking account of the evolution of television in the post-broadcasting era, and how programming ideas are creatively redeveloped and franchised in East Asia. In this first comprehensive study of television program adaptation across cultures, the authors argue that adaptation, transfer, and recycling of content are multiplying to the point of marginalising other economic and cultural practices.