Media Piracy

Television has been considered one of the most popular media in Indonesia with national television programs as the most dominant for local audiences. Even though imported programs also have been introduced from the early periods of national broadcasting, media regulations in this country tend to limit foreign contents so it does not exceed national contents. However, in recent years national television’s popularity is being challenged not only by global media contents but also by the presence newer media platforms like the Internet. In addition, global media contents are also becoming available through pirated media, such as via VCD, DVD, MP3, and P2P, which are easy to access in many Asian countries due to ineffective regulations against piracy. This study proposes a research question: what are the current media regulations in Indonesia in the discourse of global flows of media contents through the Internet and piracy media? The data gathered mainly from academic literatures, news articles, legislation documents, and online media obtained from Lexis Nexis Academic database The study found that since media regulations in Indonesia mainly focus only in print media and broadcasting, there are few regulations that discuss the threat of global media contents that are mainly accessed through newer media such as the Internet and pirate media outlets. Additionally, lack of socialization of intellectual property rights remains as one of the biggest factors that made any regulations ineffective to overcome media piracy.

This article revolves around fansubbing, a subtitling-based mediation phenomenon whose emergence and consolidation in recent years has gone hand in hand with the globalisation of Japanese animated cinema. The paper begins with an overview of (i) the origins and rationale for the popularity of anime in Japan and beyond; (ii) the first attempts to localise anime into other languages; and (iii) the contribution of fansubbing to the expansion of anime fandom worldwide. The article then proceeds to delve into the organisation of the fansubbing process and outline its most distinctive practices. The final section appraises the potential for propagation of fansubbing practices within a fast-changing cultural landscape, drawing on the theoretical models that media sociology has developed to account for similar developments in the audiovisual marketplace.

This chapter assesses the future trends and trajectory of the optical media piracy. Media piracy is an evolving cybercrime which can easily adapt to the current technological and global environment. It traces briefly the development of media piracy from the VCR technology using the cassette format to the current digital and nanotechnology using the Internet and file sharing protocols. Optical disc piracy will be a transitory phenomenon in developing countries with underdeveloped IP and Internet culture. As the country increases in Internet penetration, the locus of media piracy shifts from the temporal space of the sidewalk stalls selling pirated DVDs or illegal CD–DVD shops to the cyberspace of the Internet. The use of discs becomes less popular as media piracy becomes more convenient, easier, and cheaper with direct illegal downloading, peer-to-peer sharing, and other evasive techniques using the latest sophisticated hardware and software technologies. This chapter then examines some popular and current online digital piracy such as peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, cyberlocker, media box, anti-circumvention technology, digital spying and hacking, and other Internet piracy supported by digital, cloud, and nanotechnology. It also makes projections on media piracy look like with the advent of quantum computing and technology. Media piracy follows technological advancement and innovation, thus making it difficult for authorities to curb as it uses the same technology used by copyright holders which provides them with a variety of options to respond to regulation. Finally, this chapter examines the difficulty of regulating the Internet and the role and future involvement of China in counterfeiting and media piracy. With the rise of online media piracy, regulating the Internet would then be the main challenge of law enforcement and copyright owners as regulating the Internet to curb piracy would not be easy with legality and illegality becoming more intimately connected with the growing sophistication of technology and conflicting business interests between service providers and content providers and between copyright industries and top IT and ICT.

From the lucrative blockbusters distributed by Hollywood powerful studios to the brief videos assembled and circulated by ordinary people, contemporary screen culture is populated by a growing variety of audiovisual texts travelling across different languages and cultures. Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods, Issues provides a unique focus on the translation of these increasingly influential texts, including their producers and consumers, that now pervade all aspects of our lives. Through a range of examples drawn from different genres, this book moves beyond the linguistic concerns traditionally privileged within audiovisual translation, introducing students and researchers to the artistic, economic, social and political dimensions of this activity.

The book first traces the development and evolution of audiovisual translation, exploring how the homogenizing mediation practices imposed by the industry during the mass media era are being challenged by interventionist forms of translation in the era of the digital culture.

The evolving conceptual network that underpin this area of study, the key translation models driving the theorization of this activity and the most productive methodological approaches to the study of audiovisual translation are then surveyed, critiqued and illustrated in a systematic, easy-to-follow manner. Multimodal theory and self-mediation studies receive particular attention as the most influential theoretical frameworks that will drive audiovisual translation research in years to come. Students and early career scholars are provided with comprehensive guidance to design and undertake audiovisual translation research projects.

Each chapter features chapter summaries, introductory videos, authentic examples, break out boxes, reading suggestions and follow‐up questions for further study. A companion website provides readers with access to additional resources on each of the topics covered in this book.

Audiovisual Translation is the definitive guide to the research models and methodological approaches that are enabling and will continue to drive advances in this fast-developing area of study.

• The book can serve as a textbook for use at MA level but also constitutes a ‘first port‐of‐call’ reference on aspects of theoretical inquiry.
• The book explores new audiovisual translation genres and practices in contemporary networked societies, covering topics and issues not previously discussed in the audiovisual translation literature.
• The book includes a whole chapter offering methodological direction to readers conducting their own research at MA at doctoral level.
• The follow-up questions for discussion in all chapters provide abundant ideas for extended postgraduate essays, various types of dissertation, and (post)doctoral level research projects.

To provide a global context in understanding the persistence of media piracy in emerging economies such as the Philippines and Vietnam, this chapter broadly describes the ongoing politics of hegemony and resistance in the global intellectual property (IP) trade between the United States (U.S.) and China and economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Primarily relying on documentary evidence and applying the hegemony, relational, and social resistance theories, it investigates briefly how the U.S gains hegemonic power in the field of IP through the cultural mechanism of law in multilateral, regional and bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the aid of U.S.-dominated multilateral institutions. It paints a global economic order with the U.S. occupying a privileged position at one end as the leading producer and exporter of IP goods and services in the emerging global creative economy, particularly in the fastest-growing Asia-Pacific region, and China and some members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) emerging economies with trading ties with China such as the Philippines and Vietnam opposing this hegemony through piracy and resistance strategies on the other end. Contrary to the popular assessment of Jurisprudence and industry-led enforcement debates which paint the piracy problem as simply a case of theft and criminality or " cracks in law enforcement system " , this chapter argues otherwise and views piracy, particularly media piracy as a form of social resistance or the " Weapons of the Weak " (Scott, 1985) of IP-consuming countries against the U.S. control of the global IP trade. For resisting countries, stricter IPR regime stifles technology transfer and harms their informal economy which generates national income and employment for the poor, unemployed, and migrants. Seen from this perspective, media piracy in the Asia-Pacific region and the ASEAN, particularly in the Philippines and Vietnam, is more than just a theft of intellectual creation but a manifestation of an ongoing resistance against the U.S. hegemony in the global copyright trade in the world.

This chapter assesses the future trends and trajectory of the optical media piracy. It traces briefly the development of media piracy from the VCR technology using the cassette format to the current digital and nanotechnology using the Internet and file sharing protocols. Optical disc piracy will be a transitory phenomenon in developing countries with underdeveloped IP and Internet culture. As the country increases in Internet penetration, the locus of media piracy shifts from the temporal space of the sidewalk stalls selling pirated DVDs or illegal CD-DVD shops to the cyber space of the Internet. The use of discs becomes less popular as media piracy becomes more convenient, easier and cheaper with direct illegal downloading, peer-to-peer sharing, and other evasive techniques using the latest sophisticated hardware and software technologies. This chapter then examines some popular and current online digital piracy such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing, cyberlocker, media box, anti-circumvention technology, digital spying and hacking, and other Internet piracy supported by digital, cloud and nanotechnology. This chapter also makes projections on media piracy would look like with the advent of quantum computing and technology. Media piracy follows technological advancement and innovation, thus difficult for authorities to curb as it uses the same technology used by copyright holders which provides infringers with a variety of options to respond regulation. Finally, this chapter examines the difficulty of regulating the Internet and the role and future involvement of China in counterfeiting and media piracy. With the rise of online media piracy, regulating the Internet would then be the main challenge of law enforcement and copyright owners as regulating the Internet to curb piracy would not be easy with legality and illegality becoming more intimately connected with the growing sophistication of technology and conflicting business interests between service providers and content providers, and between copyright industries and top IT and ICT.

With over 6000 languages in the world today, media speak is far from universal, yet the complexities of translation are rarely acknowledged by the industry, or by audiences and scholars. Redressing this neglect, Speaking in Subtitles argues that the oddities and idiosyncrasies of translation are vital to screen media’s global storytelling. Examining a range of examples from crowdsourced subtitling to avant-garde dubbing to the growing field of ‘fansubbing’, Tessa Dwyer proposes that film, television and video are fundamentally ‘translational' media.

Topics include:
Censorship
Media piracy
Amateurism
Fansubbing (fan subtitling)
Crowdsourcing

Case Studies include: The Invisible Cinema, New York (1970-74) and Viki Global TV (www.viki.com)

This paper examines the law enforcement mechanism for the implementation of the Anti-illegal Camcording Act of 2010 in selected Philippine cinemas against film piracy and illegal camcording. Using sociological perspectives, especially some tenets of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and qualitative data from testimonies of 20 student-informants who witnessed actual illegal camcording of some cinemas in Metro Manila, interview from the chairperson of the Optical Media Board (OMB), Philippines' lead agency against media piracy, personal observation and experience of the author as a movie goer, media reports, and secondary literature and the Actor-network Theory (ANT) as the primary theoretical framework, it argues that an effective law enforcement against illegal camcording entails an efficient and effective use of human and technological surveillance and policing using the latest digital technologies. Results showed that that illegal camcording which occurred in some cinemas in Metro Manila as witnessed by the study's student informants, were primarily caused by the lack of efficient human monitoring by cinema personnel and government agents, as well as by the absence of the latest surveillance and detection technologies which could have deterred illegal recording of films by pirates inside the movie theater. The recommends an efficient human and technological surveillance in cinemas employing the latest anti-piracy technologies to implement the law.

Piracy is taking on an entirely new character in the age of media in the cloud. Global technology and business models are evolving rapidly, while regulators and lawmakers are catching up in attempts to work out a new set of rules of engagement. In this article, I explore the divergent developments between a retrograde global copyright governance regime and cloud-based media distribution that focuses on connectivity and access. I also examine attempts at business model innovation that seek to effectively embrace and control the continually evolving user–content– platform interaction in the cloud. This article will contribute to our understanding of this rapidly changing ecosystem and the dynamics between technology, law and market.

Esta tese tem como principal objetivo ajudar a preencher o défice de pesquisa teórico-empírica com origem nos países lusófonos em torno do confronto aparente entre os direitos dos utilizadores de Internet e a aplicação dos direitos de propriedade intelectual. Recorrendo a um olhar interdisciplinar (comunicacional, sociológico, económico e jurídico), visa colocar em relevo o novo papel dos utilizadores de obras culturais enquanto distribuidores proporcionado pelas plataformas informais paralelas aos circuitos legais de distribuição.

A primeira parte, de cariz teórico, inicia-se com uma genealogia histórica dos conceitos de pirataria, direito de autor, copyright e propriedade intelectual para prosseguir com uma exposição dos fundamentos para uma crítica da economia política da informação, seguindo-se um retrato da evolução tecnológica e comercial da partilha de ficheiros ao longo da última década e meia. Quase a terminar, encontra-se um resumo da literatura mais relevante sobre a relação entre vendas e cópias não autorizadas de bens informacionais, assim como uma apresentação dos principais resultados de centenas de estudos quantitativos incidindo nos comportamentos dos utilizadores e nas motivações que os levam a descarregar obras protegidas por direitos de autor. Por fim, procede-se a uma análise comparativa de um conjunto de indicadores estatísticos relativos aos níveis de penetração das TICs em Portugal e no Brasil e às atividades online dos utilizadores de Internet de ambos os países.

A segunda parte consiste numa análise empírica dos comportamentos e perceções dos utilizadores portugueses e brasileiros de redes peer-to-peer (P2P) e sites que permitem efetuar cópias não autorizadas de obras protegidas por direitos de autor. Para tal, irei socorrer-me das respostas de 301 indivíduos de ambas as nacionalidades a um inquérito online bem como nas declarações posteriores de 16 desses inquiridos recolhidas por entrevista online.

Com esta pesquisa pretende-se demonstrar que, longe de ser uma mera falha de mercado, a partilha é antes uma dimensão fundamental da cultura (Aigrain 2011). Visto deste prisma, as limitações da perspetiva economicista da contabilização dos eventuais prejuízos tornam-se evidentes.

P2P Culture: A comparative sociological analysis of sites and networks for online sharing of music, movies and ebooks in Portugal and Brazil

Abstract: This thesis has for its main goal to help fill the gap of theoretical and empirical research originating from Portuguese-speaking countries concerning the apparent clash between the rights of Internet users and the enforcement of intellectual property laws. By way of an interdisciplinary lens gathering contributions from communication science, sociology, economics and law, it intends to shed light on the new role of users of cultural works as distributors – a role amplified by informal platforms parallel to formal distribution circuits.

The first part, of a theoretical nature, starts with a historical genealogy of concepts such as piracy, copyright, droit d’auteur and intellectual property, followed by a presentation of the technological and commercial evolution of file sharing over the past decade and a half.
Next comes an overview of the most relevant literature on the relationship between sales and unauthorized copies of information goods, as well as a synthesis of the main results of hundreds of quantitative studies covering the behaviors of file-sharers and their motives for downloading copyrighted works. Finally, this part ends with a comparative analysis of a set of statistical indicators regarding the penetration levels of ICTs in Portugal and Brazil as well as on the most popular online activities of Internet users in both countries.

The second part comprises an empirical analysis of the behaviors and perceptions of Portuguese and Brazilian users of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks and sites enabling the unauthorized copying of copyrighted works. The analysis will be based on the answers of 301 individuals of both nationalities to an online survey, as well as on the subsequent statements made by 16 of these respondents in the context of a series of online interviews.

With this research, it is my aim to show that, rather than being only a market failure, sharing is instead a fundamental dimension of culture (Aigrain 2011) Seen in this light, the constraints of an economic perspective exclusively aimed at measuring any possible losses become evident.

Abstract:

This chapter provides an overview of the content of this book. It traces briefly the background on how the media piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam has grown through the years despite the hegemonic pressure of the United States Trade Representative and the government efforts of the Philippines and Vietnam to reform their respective Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws and local copyright protection system. It reviews some popular and prescriptive theories on why media piracy persists in developing countries and explains why the sociological perspective, particularly the relational and network approach of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can be an appropriate theoretical framework to understand comprehensively the persistence of media piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Furthermore, it describes the book's main objectives as well as the data source and research method which are used in the two subsequent sociological studies that became the basis of this book. Finally, it defines some major terms on media piracy which are often cited in the text and provides a roadmap for the book, describing briefly the content of each chapter and how the chapters are interconnected with one another to achieve the book's overall purpose.

Grounded on a series of cases studies in Brazil, this thesis is an investigation of online audiences’ informal practices of viewing and distribution over the internet. As part of the steadily growing phenomena of peer to peer file sharing, television audiences across the globe are increasingly utilising the internet to informally access, distribute and/or facilitate access of television shows to others. For the purposes of this research, I use the term pirate audiences drawing from Ramon Lobato´s (2011) first use of the term, as well as similar uses such as “piracy audience” (Gustavo Cardoso, Lima, and Vieira, 2010), which are based on the notion of audiences involved in unauthorised practices of media sharing. I extend this conceptualisation of pirate audiences through an original empirical study. I examine how the concept of pirate audiences can offer a new way to understand piracy and audiences. I argue that this can be re-thought by exploring their informal practices of viewing and distribution of television content on the internet. Regardless of the source, generally, the content watched by a person who downloads is the same as a person who watches it on their television set. I draw from Nick Couldry’s (2011, 2012) work on everyday practices on digital media and analyse research on media file sharing and audiences’ digital practices. This analysis is developed through an investigation into how pirate audiences in Brazil create and maintain a parallel system of informal viewing and distribution of US television programmes through their informal practices on the internet. There is little research on television file sharing in Brazil as reports on internet use in the country only consider music, film and/or software downloading. Brazil is a BRIC country, one of the world’s largest economies and where over 20 million people are involved in unauthorised downloading of media. The investigation on Brazilian pirate audiences was undertaken using a mixed methods approach, which included qualitative and quantitative data collection. The main methods of data collection included online nonparticipant observation and analysis of downloading practices through websites and online communities in Orkut, online interviews and a focus group, and an online survey of 106 participants (n=106) who were regular downloaders of TV shows in Brazil. All data was coded and analysed by themes. The results demonstrate that informal practices are transnational because of the global reach of the internet. However, I argue that socio-political and economic aspects in Brazil have an influence on how people perceive and organise themselves in informal practices on the internet. This thesis supplements the literature on informal media economies and audiences research in online environments. By grounding the research in case studies in Brazil, the contribution to knowledge relies on making visible an activity that is considered criminal, but at the same time, it represents how audiences are evolving in the digital environment.

This chapter provides an overview of the content of this book. It traces briefly the background on how the media piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam has grown through the years despite the hegemonic pressure of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the government efforts of the Philippines and Vietnam to reform their respective Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws and local copyright protection system. It reviews some popular and prescriptive theories on why media piracy persists in developing countries and explains why the sociological perspective, particularly the relational and network approach of the actor–network theory (ANT), can be an appropriate theoretical framework to understand comprehensively the persistence of media piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Furthermore, it describes the book’s main objectives as well as the data source and research method which are used in the two subsequent sociological studies that became the basis of this book. Finally, it defines some major terms on media piracy which are often cited in the text and provides a roadmap for the book, describing briefly the content of each chapter and how the chapters are interconnected with one another to achieve the book’s overall purpose.

This chapter describes the various intertwining social and technological macro forces which sustain the illegal optical disc piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Owing to the limitation of data on Vietnam, the chapter’s analyses focus on the forces which sustain the Philippine piracy trade, particularly on the Quiapo Barter Trade Center Complex (QBTCC) piracy network, the main optical media piracy hub in the country, although it also identifies and analyzes some social and technological forces which sustain piracy in Vietnam. This chapter also provides a social background and profile of the optical disc traders in both countries and the reasons why they persist in this type of trade. It argues that Filipino and Vietnamese traders participate in the piracy business because of some major social, economic, social, and technological factors, in addition to the weak legal, judicial, and law enforcement systems that encourage them to participate in counterfeit media piracy. This includes the “push” factors such as the adverse socioeconomic situations and unstable peace and order situation of some impoverished regions in the Philippines and Vietnam where most of the piracy traders and workers come from. In the Philippines, the war in Mindanao, poverty, and social discrimination against Muslims drive the displaced Maranao and Maguindanao Muslims to migrate to urban centers and engage in optical disc retail piracy as an alternative livelihood. It also includes “pull” factors such as the opening of more trading opportunities facilitated by the Doi Moi (renovation) economic policy of the Vietnamese government, the lure of higher profits in optical disc piracy trade, and the ease of registering and maintaining CD–DVD shops that sell counterfeit discs. The chapter ends with other important factors such as material and social networks that support the persistence of piracy: (1) the technological network (the use of allied digital technologies that facilitate the piracy business operations for traders, particularly the Internet, the cell phone, and other hardware and software digital technologies); (2) the kinship network (the employment of social and kinship ties to manage the illegal trade and protect its secrecy); (3) the ethnic network (the use of common cultural heritage for recruitment of informal workers and protection of trade secret and use of language as deterrence to law enforcement); and (4) the religious affiliation (the unintended effect of common religious affiliation which creates a sense of community among traders in the Philippines, hindering law enforcement to penetrate the illegal trade and leakage of the piracy trade secrets to authorities).

Recent developments in the audiovisual marketplace have led to an increasing compartmentalization of subtitling audiences and the emergence of amateur subtitling cultures that aim to cater for the idiosyncratic demands of their target audience niche. Fansubbing, i.e. the subtitling of Japanese animated films by fans, is one of the most influential and successful of such amateur cultures. This article examines the genealogy of this peculiar phenomenon, describes some of its most distinctive subtitling practices and explores the effects of its interventionist agenda. Drawing on the apparatus of multimodal theory and the insights provided by a small purpose-built corpus, this paper argues that fansubbing exploits traditional meaningmaking codes in a creative manner and, more importantly, criss-crosses the traditional boundaries between linguistic and visual semiotics in innovative
ways.

Available here: https://read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/article/49/1/231/294856/Utopia-in-a-Package-Digital-Media-Piracy-and-the?guestAccessKey=000e01a6-bb04-4845-a230-99af5c3dc4a1

Abstract: Following the 1959 revolution, the Cuban state nationalized media outlets on the island and has controlled them ever since. Since 2010, however, this monopoly has been threatened by the paquete (package), one terabyte of pirated digital media collected by independent Cuban entrepreneurs and circulated through informal distribution networks across the island using flash drives and hard drives. Combining archival and textual analysis with ethnographic research, this article analyzes how the legacy of state socialism gave distinctive shape to experiences and perceptions of digital media piracy as well as the influx of global entertainment genres and the rise of new forms of domestic cultural production, especially advertising, that the paquete enabled” to “this article analyzes how the legacy of state socialism gave distinctive shape to experiences and perceptions of digital media piracy. I show how the state’s history of contravening international copyright provided justification for piracy and how cultural producers and consumers worked to reconcile revolutionary aspirations for socialist art with the influx of global entertainment and the rise of new forms of local cultural production, especially advertising, enabled by the paquete.

A short, public-facing analysis of this research was previously published online through Cultural Anthropology's Fieldsights; available here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/utopia-in-a-package-digital-media-piracy-and-the-politics-of-entertainment-in-cuba

Introduction Bolivia is one of the poorest and most socially unequal countries in South America, with a GDP (gross domestic product) per capita of US$4200—around one-eleventh that of the United States. 1 Proportionally, it has the largest indigenous population in the region and also one of the largest informal sectors, accounting for roughly two-thirds of all economic activity. 2 Rates of music, video, and software piracy are estimated to be among the highest in Latin America. The most recent International Intellectual Property Alliance report on Bolivia cited rates of 90% for music piracy and 80% for software piracy (IIPA 2006). The current level of music piracy is probably similar to that of neighboring Peru, which the IIPA listed at 98% for 2009 (IIPA 2010). Bolivia has not traditionally been a large domestic producer of pirated music and film. Until recently, most of the pirated goods sold in Bolivia were imported from Peru, which has a more developed industrial base and a larger media sector. As in the other countries documented in this report, however, the plummeting cost of reproduction equipment has fostered large-scale domestic production of pirated media and much wider distribution—fueling a pirate mass market that has all but destroyed the tiny, vastly more expensive licit market. In the process, that mass market has also provided access to recorded media for the first time to an emerging population of young consumers, built on Bolivia's remarkable demographic wave (the median age in Bolivia is under 22, and almost 40% of Bolivians are under 15 years of age). The IIPA has long called for the revision of Bolivia's copyright laws and for stronger enforcement. But beyond the creation of a national intellectual property service (SENAPI) in 1999 and unfulfilled plans, in 2001, to overhaul copyright and create a special police unit dedicated to enforcement (in conformance with a US-led regional trade agreement), recent Bolivian governments have shown few signs of interest in policy change (IIPA 2008). As in other countries, this outcome reflects a range of domestic and international pressures, from the 1 Like the Mexico chapter, this chapter is primarily a work of individual scholarship and therefore provides a narrower account of piracy than the four large country reports (South Africa, Russia, Brazil, and India). Its focus is music piracy, and secondarily, the optical disc market. 2 According to Schneider (2002), the informal economy—mostly street vendors and itinerant work-ers—represents 67% of Bolivia's total economy. Bolivia did not figure in Vuletin's (2008) account of the informal economy in Latin America. The methodological challenges of measuring the informal economy make all such figures approximate and precise comparisons difficult.

Published as part of Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Edited by Joe Karaganis.  http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/

So-called ‘piracy’ is sometimes seen to be justified by the inequalities which deny economically disadvantaged populations access to cultural products, media and knowledge. Justification may also be related to the injustices that are seen to surround the mechanisms and power structures underlying authorship, ownership, rights protection and circulation. These kinds of justifications are frequently heard in Bolivia - the poorest and most indigenous county in South America – where, in turn, they are linked to the histories of foreign exploitation of the nation’s rich natural and cultural resources. Education, economics and the dynamism of cultural life in Bolivia today are highly dependent on the unlicensed reproduction and circulation of internationally produced books, software, music and video. Although copyright protection is enshrined in law and in the new constitution, no serious enforcement policy has emerged in recent administrations, including the current pro-indigenous government of Evo Morales, with its anti-capitalist and decolonising rhetoric. Based on ethnographic research in 2007-8, this paper examines some of the strategies adopted by Gregorio Mamani (1960-2011), an indigenous (originario) musician and music video producer, in the context of a market dominated by the unlicensed circulation of music videos. How did this low-income musician encourage (low income) vendors to sell and (low income) consumers to purchase ‘original’ rather than ‘pirated’ versions of his work? In short, how do justifications regarding access and fair recompense for artistic production play out in this kind of local, low income and unregulated context? It is shown how in his music videos Mamani exploited his indigenous identity to protect his interests, even strategically essentialising himself as a ‘noble savage’. His ludic warnings to those who might threaten his interests emerge as a kind of anti-piracy artform or entertainment – the ‘play of piracy’. Such play was nonetheless a deeply serious matter for Mamani who struggled intensely to survive economically as an artist, and recognised how piracy was able both to threaten and augment his celebrity and success as an artist.

Developments in communication technologies have brought about the proliferation of self-mediated textualities and empowered networks of non-professional translators to engage in participatory subtitling practices. These subtitling agencies are often part of a movement of cultural resistance against global capitalist structures and institutions, whether for aesthetic or political reasons. This article gauges the extent to which participatory subtitling challenges assumptions underpinning traditional scholarship on intercultural communication, as instantiated in the pragmatics of audio-visual translation. It is argued that affectivity emerges as a powerful non-representational force behind amateur mediation. Rather than simply aiming to deliver ‘accurate’ representations of the source text meaning, amateur subtitles seek to performatively intervene in the articulation and reception of the audio-visual semiotic ensemble. Drawing on selected examples of aesthetic and political subtitling activism, this article examines the relevance of non-representational theory, originally developed within the field of human geography, to the study of the expressive or transformational role of amateur subtitling. It is suggested that the epistemological and political dimensions of this non-representational phenomenon are symptomatic of a wider trend towards a radical model of democracy.

This chapter describes the various intertwining social and technological macro forces which sustain the illegal optical disc piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Owing to limitation of data on Vietnam, the chapter focuses more on the Philippines particularly on Quiapo Barter Trade Center  Complex (QBTCC) piracy network, the main optical media piracy hub in the Philippines,  although there are some patterns which can be found in both countries.  It opens with a general profile of traders of optical disc piracy trade in the Philippines and Vietnam. Then it argues that these Filipino and Vietnamese traders participate in the piracy business because of some major social, economic, and technological factors other than weak legal, judicial system and law enforcement systems that encourage them to participate in counterfeit media business piracy. This includes “push” factors such as the adverse socio-economic situations in the rural areas in Philippines and Vietnam. In the Philippines, the war in Mindanao, poverty and social discrimination drive the displaced Maranao and Maguindanao Muslims  to migrate to urban centers and engage in optical disc retail piracy as an alternative livelihood, and “pull” factors  such as the opening of more trading opportunities facilitated by the Doi Moi (renovation) economic policy of the Vietnamese government, the lure of higher profits in optical disc piracy trade, and the ease of registering and maintaining a CD-DVD shops that sell counterfeit discs. The chapter ends with other important factors such as material and social networks that support the persistence of piracy: the (1) technological network: the use of  allied digital technologies that facilitate the piracy business operations for traders, particularly the Internet, the cellphone and other hardware and software digital technologies, (2) kinship network: the employment of social and kinship ties to manage the illegal trade and protect  its secrecy, (3) ethnic network: the use common cultural heritage for recruitment of informal workers and protection of trade secret and use of language as deterrence to law enforcement, and (4) religious affiliation: the common religious identity as Muslims creates a sense of community  among traders in the Philippines which obstructs law enforcement and minimizes leakage of the piracy trade secrets.

Despite the general emphasis on the positive implications of ‘digital disruption’ in terms of freedom, democratization, disintermediation and cultural diversity, the digital impact on film production and distribution is more complex and nuanced, and maybe less ‘disruptive’, than what we would be inclined to believe. With respect to the effects of digital media on the film industry, this article aims to provide an insight into film circulation in the digital environment, and into the multiple ways in which the Internet can affect and especially undermine the traditional system of film distribution. Based on this general framework, the article also aims to map the main features of contemporary Italian online distribution ecology, with particular reference to the ‘quality’ of access to film culture and to the copyright issue. The article is structured into six sections. The first three sections provide a general contextualization, and address in particular the relationships between the Internet and the window release system (section 1), the question of ‘piracy’ (section 2), the changes in gatekeeping mechanisms and patterns of demand and the issue of ‘access’ (section 3). The remaining three sections focus on the Italian context: section 4 presents the main theoretical categories used to map contemporary Italian online film distribution; section 5 discusses the main features of the map; finally, section 6 provides an insight into the current legal framework and scope of the new Italian ‘Regulation about copyright protection in electronic communication networks’, ratified by AGCOM in December 2013.

This is an edited volume of essays on philosophy as university work and as a 'pirate condition'. Taking inspiration from Gary Hall's pirate philosophy, and from raúl rodríguez freire's critique of the contemporary condition of the intellectual, three Mexican authors reflect on what it means to do philosophy today from the perspective of the material conditions of academic work. In Spanish only, so far.

This paper analyses the history and current status of online shadow libraries and connects those findings to the current state of public and academic libraries. It takes as a premise that we can learn from the success of pirate libraries to improve how our public and academic libraries function. The main points this paper takes away from the analysis of shadow libraries is that they can learn public and academic libraries to become a node in today's information network, to open up infrastructure and collections, to take advantage of the physicality of the library, and to use the branding of the library to their advantage.

Media sociologists and cultural globalization theorists have tended to overlook the contribution of translators to the circulation of media content in the era of digital culture. After critiquing the reasons for the invisibility of translation in the literature on global cultural transactions, this article moves on to examine the emergence of new amateur subtitling collectivities in today’s informational society, exploring the role that non-professional translators – specifically, networks of activist subtitlers – play within the participatory media industries. Using examples from a case study of Ansarclub, a Spanish group of engaged amateur translators, this article gauges the extent to which their participation, remediation and bricolage practices – the main components of digital culture (Deuze [2006] Participation, remediation, bricolage: considering principal components of a digital culture. The Information Society 22: 63–75) – fit in or divert from the cocreational dynamics underpinning other domains of the media marketplace. It is argued that the interventionist and ‘monitorial’ quality of activist subtitling lies at the heart of an emerging paradigm of civic engagement, with fluid transnational communities of interest acting as the building blocks of participatory translation.

This article explores the emergence of transformative subtitling practices in the digital culture, a context of production shaped by the dialectical relation between technological advances and cultural change. Drawing on a qualitative discussion of fansubbing practices, the article contends that transformative subtitling signals a clear move towards a regime of co-creation between producers and users of media content, fostering mutual recognition between these increasingly blurred camps. The second part of the article delivers an analytical discussion of examples of authorial titling in mainstream British drama to demonstrate the penetration of transformative subtitling in commercial media products that also posit spectatorial subjectivity. The article concludes by reflecting on the parataxic reading practices that these new subtitling practices encourage and the fluid nature of the transnational collectivities it caters for.

What if videotapes were considered as either waste or commodity – to be forgotten, or sold and reused and re-recorded? This is the ques- tion raised by this text, which gives an account of a multi-sited ethno- graphic project that follows the human and material circulation of amateur analogue video technologies in Romania since the mid-1980s. At the intersection of anthropology and media archaeology, this text aims to show how videotapes have been an important part of a post- socialist Romanian media infrastructure, that distributed pirated me- dia, home movies, and local television productions.

In the 2010s, new forms of hand-to-hand digital media piracy displaced state control over media distribution in Cuba and facilitated the influx of global media, including K-Pop, just as Cuban socialism came under renewed pressure through economic reform. In this context, this article contends, Cuban youth turned to K-Pop to reimagine the self, sociality, and Cuba’s place in the world. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows how K-Pop appealed to fans by fostering fantasies of becoming enterprising individuals through neoliberal solidarity. These aspirations were reinforced by the industry’s pursuit of immediation, or its use of digital media to produce intimate and immediate connections that denied the mediations on which they depended. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how desires for and anxieties about immediacy motivate K-Pop fandom and its geo-political imaginaries and how a global capitalist culture industry can appeal to fans by offering relief from the neoliberal capitalism it reproduces.

This is the accepted version. The published version can be found at the following link (warning paywall): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13678779211024665?fbclid=IwAR3GV8tQMRrDE_Cd9yMnsgUZYaGsTgubgPOzfxwB4KS3W-b-nXlEwSm3qt8. Email me at lhumphreys@tulane.edu and I will be happy to send you the published version.

The persistence of the optical disc piracy trade in the Philippines and Vietnam, two Southeast Asian countries consistently listed in the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Special 301 watch lists as piracy hotspots in Southeast Asia, is sustained not just by the lack of law enforcement but by the inaction of some law enforcers and government officials who are in alliance with illegal piracy traders and other illegal protection groups. Piracy reports often view the persistence of optical disc piracy as caused by nonenforcement of law.  But nonenforcement is not always fueled by lack of regulation. Ironically, in some situations where corruption is involved, the presence of law enforcement, often results in nonenforcement.  By strategically taking no enforcement action, “corrupt” enforcers intentionally permit illegality and piracy. In this case, the enforcement system is colonized—borrowing Habermas’ term—by illegal networks, leading to collusion between law enforcers and illegal traders.  Thus, the replication and sale of counterfeit discs in these two countries could not be attributed only to the lack of law enforcement but, above all, to corruption and conspiracy by those who are enrolled in the illegal trade. Using documentary and ethnographic data, giving more emphasis on the Philippine situation owing to some limitations of data on some aspects of the trade in Vietnam, this chapter analyzes sociologically some social patterns and cases of corruption, particularly bribery, and how they result in some forms of nonenforcement of the Optical Media Law in the Philippines and Vietnam. Ultimately, this chapter argues that what the Optical Media Law says “it is” may not be what “corrupt” law enforcers and other illegal groups say “it is” in actual social practice.

Chapter Abstract: This chapter examines piracy as a means for creative production in the context of Chilean community media. In January of 2018, after two decades operating outside of a legal framework, Chile’s first community television station received a license to transmit under the country’s new digital television law. Station members received this news with excitement, but also trepidation. Like their national television counterparts, this small station understood production as not only an act of creating their own content, but also finding and disseminating interesting content from other producers. That is to say, they had become integral to the community through their reporting on neighborhood events, and their use of one cable subscription to transmit selected programming to the entire low-income neighborhood. The transition from informal to formal and analog to digital would also likely mean a change in the station’s logic of production and, subsequently, a greater adherence to intellectual property laws. Analyzing station members’ reticence to give up some of their creative license, I argue here for a theory of cultural production that considers a shift in context as a component of content creation.


Book Abstract: Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America is the first sustained effort to present an alternative framework for understanding piracy and contemporary challenges to global discourses on intellectual property (IP) in the Americas. While piracy might just look like theft and derivative reproduction from the perspective of many right-holders, the contributors to this volume go beyond this economic-driven logic and show how practices of copying are in fact practices of reinvention that reflect the rich social networks and forms of creativity, authorship, commerce, and consumption that characterize informal economies. From a perspective informed by contemporary scenarios in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, and the United States, they engage in a discussion of alternatives that-predicated on the importance of protecting culture-allow for other ways of conceiving prosperity at local, national, regional, and global levels. Examples discussed include video games, clothing, trinkets, music, film, TV, and books.

This chapter describes the various intertwining social and technological macro forces which sustain the illegal optical disc piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Owing to the limitation of data on Vietnam, the chapter’s analyses focus on the forces which sustain the Philippine piracy trade, particularly on the Quiapo Barter Trade Center Complex (QBTCC) piracy network, the main optical media piracy hub in the country, although it also identifies and analyzes some social and technological forces which sustain piracy in Vietnam. This chapter also provides a social background and profile of the optical disc traders in both countries and the reasons why they persist in this type of trade. It argues that Filipino and Vietnamese traders participate in the piracy business because of some major social, economic, social, and technological factors, in addition to the weak legal, judicial, and law enforcement systems that encourage them to participate in counterfeit media piracy. This includes the “push” factors such as the adverse socioeconomic situations and unstable peace and order situation of some impoverished regions in the Philippines and Vietnam where most of the piracy traders and workers come from. In the Philippines, the war in Mindanao, poverty, and social discrimination against Muslims drive the displaced Maranao and Maguindanao Muslims to migrate to urban centers and engage in optical disc retail piracy as an alternative livelihood. It also includes “pull” factors such as the opening of more trading opportunities facilitated by the Doi Moi (renovation) economic policy of the Vietnamese government, the lure of higher profits in optical disc piracy trade, and the ease of registering and maintaining CD–DVD shops that sell counterfeit discs. The chapter ends with other important factors such as material and social networks that support the persistence of piracy: (1) the technological network (the use of allied digital technologies that facilitate the piracy business operations for traders, particularly the Internet, the cell phone, and other hardware and software digital technologies); (2) the kinship network (the employment of social and kinship ties to manage the illegal trade and protect its secrecy); (3) the ethnic network (the use of common cultural heritage for recruitment of informal workers and protection of trade secret and use of language as deterrence to law enforcement); and (4) the religious affiliation (the uninteneded effect of common religious affiliation which creates a sense of community among traders in the Philippines, hindering law enforcement to penetrate the illegal trade and leakage of the piracy trade secrets to authorities).

Transcripción de la mesa redonda 'Piratería Musical y el Uso Justo de la Música Nativa' convocado por Henry Stobart y auspiciada por el
Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz, Bolivia (18 Junio 2008)

Spanish language transcription of a roundtable entitled "Music Piracy and the Fair Use of Native Music' organized by Henry Stobart and hosted by the Museum of Ethnograophy and Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz, Bolivia on the 18th June 2008.

EXPOSITORES/PONENCIAS

LA PIRATERÍA DISCOGRÁFICA
Ignacio Arce (Director, Derechos de Autor, SENAPI) 6

Miriam de Alvarado (Departamento de Regalias, SOBADAYCOM) 13

Zacarías Bueno (Ejecutivo Nacional, Federatión Nacional de Comerciantes
Minoristas en Audio Visual, Audio Musical y Ramas a Fines) 17

Santiago Quenta Ninachoque (Jefe de la Unidad Patrimonio Inmaterial,
Viceministerio de Cultura) 22

Oscar García (Compositor/Director, PROAUDIO/Docente, Conservatorio de
Música, La Paz - material: ‘música boliviana’) 25

Gregorio Mamani Villacorta (Musico/Director, CEMBOL Tomás Katari) 29

Humberto Mancilla (Pukañawi/Abogado) 36

Bernardo Rozo (Músico/Antropólogo) 41

EL USO JUSTO DE LA MÚSICA NATIVA
Waltér Sánchez (Etnomusicólogo, Universidad Mayor de San Simón,
Cochabamba) 55

Gregorio Mamani Villacorta (Músico/Director CEMBOL Tomás Katari 63

Santiago Quenta Ninachoque (Jefe de la Unidad Patrimonio Inmaterial,
Viceministerio de Cultura) 69

Germán Yucra (Ex-dirigente campesino, Chuquisaca) 74

Oscar Garcia (Compositor/Director, PROAUDIO/Docente, Conservatorio de
Música, La Paz - material: ‘música boliviana’) 79

Elena Echeverría (Departamento Juridico, SOBADAYCOM) 86

Humberto Mancilla (Pukañawi/Abogado) 99

Elvira Espejo (Artista/Comunario de Qaqachaka) y Alvaro Montenegro
(Conservatorio de Música, La Paz)

Crisp, Virginia (2018) ‘Release Groups & The Scene: Re-intermediation and Competitive Gatekeepers Online’ Cinéma & Cie: International Film Studies Journal, Special Edition – Re-intermediation: Distribution, Online Access, and Gatekeeping in the Digital European Market, pp. 67 – 80.

This chapter sets out to investigate the role that amateur translation plays in the process of media convergence and gauge the extent to which the proliferation of co-creational practices pertaining to the production, translation and distribution of subtitled media content blur the distinction between the roles of producer and consumer in political news interviews. I begin by exploring how the role of translation within global news media has been theorized in recent years and teasing out the implications of technological changes for the blurring of news production, consumption and translation. I then focus on the social processes that have prompted the emergence of amateur communities of journalists/translators, whether in the form of structured activist networks or fluid groupings of engaged citizens, as influential agents in the digital mediascape. The chapter then articulates the implications of these developments for the discipline of translation studies, including the shift from referential accuracy towards narrative negotiation and the politics of affinity as the main drives informing amateur news mediation. The issues raised in this essay are illustrated with a case study involving the subtitling of a political news interview by amateur mediators.

The criminalization of media piracy, which dates as far back as the seventeenth-century yoking of copyright infringements to more violent forms of looting on the open seas, runs up against the romantic allure of the swash-buckling pirate. Whether the rogue booksellers of the eighteenth century or contemporary digital file sharers, the media pirate cuts a hip, antiestablishment figure: at once creative, transgressive, and enterprising. So the search for more demoniacal associations continues, roping in the smuggler, the counterfeiter, the serial killer, and, closer to our times, the terrorist. As the war on terror bleeds into the war on piracy, the dual logics of segregation and immunization that shape all biopolitical paradigms of security increasingly inform reports brought out by government agencies and ostensibly independent think tanks. Securitizing the global population against piratical depredation requires the partitioning of piracy into creative activities (collage, sampling, mash up) that produce something new and acts of mere poaching that add no value. This demarcation is mapped onto the planet: large parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the historically constituted Global South—are marked as problem zones for the global governance of intellectual property. Within these regions, there is a widening chasm between neoliberal elites and the relationally subaltern masses in their adherence to IPR (intellectual property rights) regimes and their attitude toward piratical activities. Starting with the liberal distinction between productive and unproductive forms of media piracy, a distinction that shores up a geopolitics of legality with Asia as its wild and recalcitrant outpost, this article explores the implications of the gap that opens up between legality and legitimacy. In the absence of hard evidence from the informal “survival” sectors, the article draws on ethnographic and anecdotal evidence to explain the lack of political will in enforcing IPR laws. Taking into account the myriad ground-level practices around media forms and platforms, the concept of global media is reconsidered. Finally, the article ends with two takes on the framing of piratical activities as “parasitical.” First, it argues that the “third” of Third Cinema now lives on in these “Southern” piratical practices. Second, in a more speculative vein, it argues for a development of the parasitical as a framework for apprehending the creative potentiations of media piracy beyond the confines of bourgeois legality.