Media Piracy: the politics and practices of borrowing
Tuesday 17 June 2014
Queen Mary University of London
Venue: Hitchcock Cinema

A one-day symposium hosted by the AHRC Network project ‘Bazaar Cinema: Re-purposing Media and debating cultural rights of Youth Communities in London and Mumbai’

Keynotes:

• Lawrence Liang (Alternative Law Forum)
• Dr Anne Barron (London School of Economics)

The symposium is free and open to all (no registration)

With keynote presentations from Lawrence Liang and Anne Barron ‘Media Piracy: the politics and practices of borrowing’ takes a fresh look at what Ravi Sundaram has called “cultures of the copy”. Whilst government agencies and media industries are variously trying to freeze or extract value from emergent cultures of media piracy across postcolonial, industrial, and political-economic contexts, there are broader interests at stake. This symposium explores what frameworks can help the different communities of media creators, digital activists, hackers, researchers and everyday tinkerers move beyond the moralism of copyright and toward the pragmatic considerations of creating a contextual movement for a vibrant and participatory digital commons. Alongside keynote presentations will be host of international speakers, a roundtable discussion of industry expert practitioners and a screening of Naata (The Bond) with a Q&A with the directors, Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar (TATA Institute of Social Sciences).

Schedule for the day

9.30-10.00      Welcome and registration (coffee and tea)

10.00-11.00     Keynote 1: Lawrence Liang – The work of Love in the age of Mechanical reproduction: Piracy, Cinephilia, and the redistribution of potential.

11.00-12.30     Panel 1 – Chair: Virginia Crisp
Miguel Afonso Caetano (University Institute of Lisbon) – P2P Culture: A comparative sociological analysis of sites and networks for the online sharing of music, movies and ebooks in Portugal and Brazil.
Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (London School of Economics) – Academic torrents, peer production networks to enable access to research.
Alexandra Kapka (University of Ulster) – How did the censorship and digital piracy of A Serbian Film affect interpretations of Serbian national identity in the U.K.?

~ 12.30 – 1.30 Lunch ~

1.30– 2.30      Keynote 2: Anne Barron – Property, Publicity and Piracy

2.30– 4.00      Panel 2 – Chair: Melanie Dulong de Rosnay
Virginia Crisp (Middlesex University) – Pirates and Proprietary Rights: Perceptions of ‘ownership’ within filesharing communities.
Maitrayee Deka (University of Milan) – ‘Bazaar’ mode of knowledge production.
Nikhil Titus and Faiz Ullah (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) – Screening Out the Public: Cultural rights of the marginalised citizens in Mumbai.

4.00-4.20 Tea break

4.20-5.30       Industry Panel – Chair: Gini Simpson (Barbican Centre)
A roundtable discussion with Jon Baines (National Association of Data Protection Officers), Jonathan Caicedo Galindo (filmmaker), and others TBC.

6.00 – 7.30     Screening: Naata (The Bond, documentary 2003: 45 minutes. Directed by Anjali Monteiro, K.P.Jayasankar). The screening will be followed by a discussion with the directors. (Venue: Hitchcock Cinema)