[spectre] Friction and Fiction: IP, Copyright and Digital Futures, V&A, 26 September

[Ozden Sahin]

*Friction and Fiction: IP, Copyright and Digital Futures*

Victoria & Albert Museum

The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

26 September 2015

10:00 – 17:00

This one day symposium takes place in the company of leading writers,
technologists, publishers and agents and ask whether the existing framework
of publishing copyright can be adequately adapted to meet - and balance -
the rights, needs and creative ambition of authors and publishers. In
collaboration with Goldsmiths, University of London, Whose Book is it
anyway? IP, collaborative business models, and questions of ethics and
creativity in digital publishing (2012-2016). and CREATe, the RCUK Centre
for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.

http://www.gold.ac.uk/create/copyrightframework/ and www.create.ac.uk

Register for the event here:
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/friction-and-fiction-ip-copyright-and-digital-futures-tickets-18521068013


Programme

*10:00 – 10:30 - Registration/Coffee*

*10: 30 – 11:00 - Keynote speech by Danuta Kean*

*Diversity or die: how the face of book publishing needs to change if it is
to have a future.*

The talk will focus on what the *Writing the Future* research found and
what is happening in the general population and the wider business
community.

*Danuta Kean is a respected publishing industry and media analysts, who has
written and edited three reports on diversity inthe publishing industry.
She was one of the main researchers for Spread the Word’s Writing the
Future: Black and Asian authors and publishing staff in the UK marketplace
report published in April 2015. As well as writing for a variety of
publications, includingthe Daily Mail and the Financial Times, she is books
editor of Mslexia, the magazine for women writers. She is currently working
on a crime novel.*

*Spread the Word is the writer development organisation for London. The
Writing the Future report can be downloaded from: www.spreadtheword.org.uk
<http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk>*

*11: 00 – 11:30 - Keynote speech by Michael Bhaskar*

*Filtering and Amplification: What Publishing Does and How it Changes*

We hear a lot about how publishing and the book are going through their biggest
change in centuries. In fact many elements remain consistent. If we look,
we can trace a consistent thread to publishing from ancient China to
Silicon Valley. But there are fundamental changes in the digital age - and
the most dramatic is the change in supply. This means that publishers core
role, more than ever, is as curators and amplifiers amidst a flood of
material like no other.

*Michael Bhaskar is Co-founder and Publishing Director of Canelo, a new
digital publisher. Previously he was Digital Publishing Director at Profile
Books and Serpent's Tail and has worked at Pan Macmillan, a literary
agency, an economics consultancy and a newspaper amongst others. He writes
widely on media, society and technology and is author of The Content
Machine, a book exploring the past present and future of publishing. He is
currently writing a book about curation to be published by Little, Brown
next year. He can be found on Twitter as @michaelbhaskar*

*11: 30 – 11:45 - Keynotes Q&A*

*11: 45 – 13:00 - What are Words Worth: All together now*

Chair: Jon Rogers

Panel Description

What Are Words Worth Now?” is a survey of almost 2500 working writers,
commissioned by the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) and
carried out by Queen Mary, University of London. The report has found that
increasingly few professional authors are able to earn a living from their
writing.

Commenting on the findings of the survey, Owen Atkinson, Chief Executive of
ALCS said:

‘These are concerning times for writers. This rapid decline in both author
incomes and in the numbers of those writing full-time could have serious
implications for the economic success of the creative industries in the UK.
If writers are to continue making their irreplaceable contribution to the *UK
economy, they need to be paid fairly for their work. This means ensuring
clear, fair **contracts with equitable terms and a copyright regime that
support creators and their ability to earn a living from their creations’.*

In contrast to the sharp decline in earnings of professional authors, the
wealth generated by the UK creative industries is on the increase.

*Jack Underwood, "Solo for Mascha Voice and other Tenuous Rooms"*

Having been denied permission to publish free-translations of poems by the
German poet Mascha Kaleko, I instead began to produce new poems that were
both an appreciation of Kaleko's originals, but that also sought to
problematise and negotiate issues around intellectual property in poetry.
As well as reading from these "Solo for Mascha Voice" poems, I will discuss
how a practical engagement with text in such a way can be viewed, in
epistemological terms, as an advancement of of our critical knowledge of
source texts, and how this might also advance our understanding of Creative
Writing Studies as practical critical discourse.

*Dr Jack Underwood studied at Norwich School of Art and Design and
Goldsmiths College, where he is now a lecturer in English and Creative
Writing. His debut collection Happiness was published by Faber in 2015, and
he reviews new work for Poetry London and The Poetry Review. He is
currently writing a non-fiction book on the subject of poetry and
uncertainty.*

*Sophie Rochester, “Writing for pleasure, writing for art or writing to get
paid?”*

The Literary Platform often considers the distinction between telling
stories and selling stories in its work, with special emphasis on how the
digital environment has impacted on this distinction. When does writing as
an art-form finish and writing as part of a commercial publishing
infrastructure begin? Much emphasis in our work is on how writers can
sustain a career and how writers are remunerated for telling stories. Our
Fiction Uncovered programme looks to support British 'mid-list' writers,
the all-important pool of writers that publishers and agents alike look to
nurture and break out to bestseller status. With so many who believe they
have a novel to write (in the US over 81% people), and with the
self-publishing industry now well established, who deserves to get paid?
Readers hold the key to decision making around purchases online whether
those titles and self-published or traditionally published. Traditional
publishers, however, are still much more successful at getting works into
the bricks and mortar retailers. In 2012, we also explored what an 'ethical
reader' might look like and asked if readers might pay more for books if
they believed it was supporting a publishing ecosystem. Around the world,
traditional publishing is being disrupted by new ways of story
dissemination. Our China report launched in May 2015 explores how China's
online literature platforms have created wealthy mega-stars, where new
writers can deliver serialised stories to young mobile readers. Our closest
Western equivalent is Wattpad, a platform where writers tell stories and
engage socially with readers, but financial remuneration is not always an
end goal. In a world where almost everyone has access to a publishing
platform, how is quality determined and how do we place a value on words
and who decides?

*Sophie Rochester founded the specialist digital publishing consultancy The
Literary Platform in 2009. In 2010 she launched Fiction Uncovered – now the
Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize – celebrating the work of British fiction
writers. She is co-founder of The Writing Platform (partnered with Bath Spa
University and Queensland University of Technology) and co-author of The
Publishing Landscape in China.*

*She has been a speaker on digital publishing at TOC New York, the
Frankfurt Book Fair, Bologna Book Fair, Editech Milan, British Council
Crossing the River conferences in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. She is
also a visiting lecturer at the London College of Communications MA in
Publishing and UEA’s MA in Creative Writing.*

*Louise O’Hare, “Sonrisa/Smile”*

Sonrisa is a bilingual magazine of new work that sets up a dialogue between
artists and readerships in Havana and London, and their networks beyond.
Issue O of Sonrisa will be published in February 2016, printed in different
formats according to location, and distributed freely via e-book in El
Paquete Semanal and by Publication Studio London. Louise O'Hare from Three
Letter Words will talk about the publishing scene in Havana discussing the
intentions of this project which makes use of the potentials of both pre-
and post- digital modes of networking and publishing.

*Louise O’Hare is interested in the potentials of art publishing
strategies. Ongoing projects include Sonrisa, a bilingual magazine of new
work by artists based in Havana and London, and Three Letter Words, a
commissioning organisation currently developing a new online distribution
channel for small-scale art publishers. In 2011 she founded the London
Bookshop Map, a platform for disseminating work by artists who have
included Dora García, Katrina Palmer and Hannah Rickards among others.
O’Hare is currently working on 'Safe' ,an exhibition inspired by Todd
Haynes' seminal film of the same name (HOME, Manchester, November 2015),
and undertaking a practice-based PhD at Northumbria University (Funded
Studentship Award 2014–17). She is an associate editor at Afterall, and
lectures on MRes Art: Theory and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. She
received her MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art,
London, in 2010.*

*13: 00 – 14:00 - Lunch*

*14: 00 – 15:15 - How Do Writers Eat?*

Chair: Michael Bhaskar

Panel Description

According to the late Charles Clark, the former copyright advisor to the
Publishers Association, is often quoted - "The answer to the machine is the
machine". He said this during a European Commission Hearing on the
Copyright Directive around 2000, in the context of the legal protection for
of technical protection measures. Thinking about the role of technology
today, especially in how it can help to move rights management from out of
the filing cabinet and onto the network, what do you see as the role of
technology in enabling creativity, new business models and rights
management , including helping authors to get paid.  In this context, you
may like to comment on the role of Copyright Hubs like the UK's Copyright
Hub, Rights Registries and emerging standards for identifiers of works,
rights and owners.

*Casey Brienza, Off the Page in America: New Manga Publishing Models for a
Digital Future*

Since the arrival of the Amazon Kindle in 2007 and the closure of the
Borders bookstore chain in 2011, the American manga publishing industry has
been under increased pressure to confront the imperatives of the digital
age. To this end, they have experimented with a range of new publishing
models, including fan-funded publishing, web aggregation, iPad/iPhone
books, and locally produced original titles. Drawing upon participant
observation and 70 semi-structured interviews with professional in and
around the field, I explore five of these new models, their strengths and
their weaknesses, and conclude, perhaps paradoxically, that the most
promising of these responses to a digital future is not in itself digital
at all. It is, in fact, to go back to basics: Developing their own original
content and otherwise exploit their own locally cultivated intellectual
property across a range of print media. While not particularly pleasing
from a Japanese cultural policy perspective as it arguably makes what
counts as “manga” less Japanese and more American, this does open up new
avenues of remunerated creative opportunity for comics artists—particularly
female ones—which would never have existed without the manga industry.

*Casey Brienza is Lecturer in Publishing and Digital Media in the
Department of Culture and Creative Industries at City University London.
She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. To date, she
has written over fifteen articles and chapters about transnational cultural
production and consumption and the political economy of the global culture
industries, specifically as these relate to publishing and emerging digital
technologies. Casey is the author of Manga in America: Transnational Book
Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics (Bloomsbury 2016),
editor of Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics without Japan? (Ashgate 2015),
and co-editor with Paddy Johnston of Cultures of Comics Work (under
contract with Palgrave Macmillan).*

*Ruth Jamieson, Why print magazines just won’t die *

The internet was supposed to kill print magazines. And yet, walk into any
newsagent and you will be confronted by a greater choice of magazines than
ever before. While many mainstream consumer magazines have floundered, a
new breed of independent, niche titles is flourishing. These titles are
pioneering new business models, reinventing the reader/publisher
relationship, creating new markets and breathing new life into old media.
Why has this happened, why won’t print journalism die and how are the new
indie magazine publishers making the internet work for them?

*Ruth Jamieson is the author of Print is Dead, Long Live Print, an
eye-opening look into the field of independent print journalism, showcasing
over 50 examples of innovative magazines from around the globe that are
shaping the future of print. These include Boneshaker, Lucky Peach, Anorak,
Riposte, The Gentlewoman, Fantastic Man, The Gourmand, WRAP, Kinfolk and
many more. *

*Martin Kretschmer, **The effects of digitisation on earnings: Can we trust
the data?*

Martin Kretschmer has conducted a number of studies on creators’ earnings
and copyright contracts, including –



•    *Artists’ Earnings and Copyright: A review of British and German music
industry data in the context of digital technologies* (2005, funded by the
Arts Council England, published in the journal *First Monday*);

•    *The Relationship between Copyright and Contract Law: A Review
commissioned by the UK Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property
Policy (SABIP)* (2010, with E. Derclaye, M. Favale, R. Watt);

•    *Copyright Contracts and Earnings of Visual Creators: A Survey of
5,800 British Designrs, Fine Artists, Illustrators and Photographers*
(2011, with L. Bently, S. Singh, E. Cooper, commissioned by DACS,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1780206);

•    *Authors’ Earnings from Copyright and Non-Copyright Sources: A Survey
of 25,000 British and German Writers* (2007, with P. Hardwick, UK data
updated in 2014 by ALCS / Queen Mary,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2619649;
http://www.alcs.co.uk/documents/authors-earning-2015-download_version.aspx).



Together these studies offer a detailed empirical picture of the conditions
under which creators have worked in the UK since the digital turn of the
mid-1990s, using survey methods, supplemented by focus group research and
legal analysis. In particular, the studies focus on sources and
distribution of earnings from copyright and non-copyright sources (using
the creator’s household as a key unit of analysis), on sources and
distribution of earnings by genre and media (including digital formats),
and on contractual practices relating to copyright (such as taking legal
advice, negotiating terms, assigning rights and being credited).  The talk
will aim to place the question ‘How Do Writers Eat?’ into wider trends, not
only relating to publishing sector.



*Martin Kretschmer is Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the
University of Glasgow, and Director of CREATe, the RCUK Centre for
Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (www.create.ac.uk
<http://www.create.ac.uk>).*

*15: 15 – 15:30 - Break*

*15: 30 – 16:45 - A View from Elsewhere*

Chair: Casey Brienza

Panel Description

Our premise is that iIf we were starting from scratch, we might devise a
copyright system which is global and diverse rather than based on
territoriality, normativity and national copyrights. Such a system might
recognize its relation to questions of access, ethics and structural
difference. It would encompass and enable,  one that would recognizes the
experimental creativities of diverse authors, readers and publishing
presses. Rather than investing in utopianism, we ask whether, Can the
existing framework can be adequately adapted to meet - and balance - the
rights,  and needs and creative ambition of authors  and publishers?

*JR Carpenter, “Writing on the Cusp of Becoming Something Else”*

As an author of print and digital literature I make extensive use of
archival materials, ‘found’ texts and images, and ‘borrowed’ source code.
In this presentation I will frame these acts of appropriation as
contributions to a larger cultural project. In 1870 Lautréamont famously
wrote: “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it.” In 2011 McKenzie
Wark wrote: “For past works to become resources for the present requires…
their appropriation as a collective inheritance, not as private property.”
Incorporation of variation, appropriation, and transformation into the
process of composition results in writing that is always on the cusp of
becoming something else.

*J. R. Carpenter is a Canadian artist, writer, researcher, performer and
maker of maps, zines, books, poetry, short fiction, long fiction,
non-fiction, and non-linear, intertextual, hypermedia, and
computer-generated narratives. Her pioneering works of digital literature
have been exhibited, published, performed, and presented in journals,
galleries, museums, and festivals around the world. She is a winner of the
CBC Quebec Writing Competition (2003 & 2005), the QWF Carte Blanche Quebec
Award (2008), and the Expozine Alternative Press Award for Best English
Book for her first novel, Words the Dog Knows (2008). She lives in South
Devon, England. **http://luckysoap.com* <http://luckysoap.com>*.*

*Eva Weinmayr, “Copyright flattens stuff — Piracy and Feminism”*

What would happen if we unhinged cultural production from intellectual
property law?  Let’s look at it through a feminist lens:  in a short
presentation I will sketch out the gendered construction of intellectual
property which creeps into our vocabulary (and actions) reducing the
complex social and cultural relationships to concepts of ownership and
control. Why would we like to “own” ideas which are meant to circulate and
proliferate through others?

*Eva Weinmayr is an artist, writer and publisher. Recently published books
include (pause) 21 scenes concerning the silence of Art in Ruins
(Occasional Papers, London) and Downing Street—Help! David Cameron likes my
art (New Documents, Los Angeles). She is currently conducting a PhD at
Valand Academy in Gothenburg. In 2009 she co-founded AND Publishing, an
platform exploring the immediacy of digital print and new forms of
dissemination. Since 2010 she runs together with artist Andrea Francke The
Piracy Project, an international exhibition and publishing activity
exploring the philosophical, legal and social implications of book piracy.*

*www.evaweinmayr.com <http://www.evaweinmayr.com> and **www.andpublishing.org
<http://www.andpublishing.org>*

*Smita Kheria, “Creators and copyright: Voices from the field”*

Smita will draw upon her ongoing research project (titled ‘Individual
Creators
<http://blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk/copyrightandcreators/create-projects/individual-creators/>’
and funded by <http://www.create.ac.uk/>CREATe <http://www.create.ac.uk/>)
that is investigating the interaction between copyright and the everyday
life of creative practitioners. Research for the project includes over 100
semi-structured interviews with a selection of creative practitioners
(writers, illustrators, composers, and visual artists), fieldwork
observation at festivals and relevant events, and the collection of
secondary data from social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter. In
this presentation, she will discuss some examples of her interviewees'
successes and failures in experimenting with finding a balance between
sharing work freely and identifying new revenue streams while navigating
the complexities of the copyright framework.

*Dr Smita Kheria is a Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the
University of Edinburgh. She is a co-director (Intellectual Property) of
SCRIPT Centre for IP and Technology Law and a member of CREATe. Her
research interests relate to using empirical research to address questions
pertaining to copyright law and policy and, to exploring connections
between Intellectual Property law and new forms of property and culture
through the lens of creators and users. She has been involved in several
research projects that have examined how copyright intersects with the
everyday practices of digital artists, online creative communities, arts
and humanities researchers and professional creators and performers.*

*16: 45 – 16:55 Closing Remarks and Open discussion*

*Sam Edenborough, Closing Remarks*

At a time when authors’ incomes are under threat more than ever and when
fundamental questions are being asked about IP and copyright, all those
involved in the business of getting books into readers’ hands are carefully
considering their roles in the value chain. By how much, in the digital
age, have users’ needs actually changed such that a rebalancing of the IP
framework is necessary? As an agent I believe that readers are best served
by a robust IP regime that allows authors to control their rights, and to
gain maximum value from them, in order to make a living -- and thus to keep
writing. The themes of this conference reflect the variety of innovations
that authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, entrepreneurs and policy
makers have made, or are considering, in order to ensure that our literary
culture thrives to the benefit of all.

*Sam Edenborough is a director of the London-based literary agency ILA Ltd
and is currently serving as President of the Association of Authors’
Agents, a trade body representing the interests of UK literary agencies. In
1997 he began his career in publishing at A M Heath & Co., one of the UK’s
longest-established literary agencies. After working as a foreign rights
agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates, he joined ILA in 2001, where he
represents clients’ translation rights in Brazil, Denmark, Italy, The
Netherlands, and Sweden.*

***

*Friction and Fiction Conference is part of the CREATe project “Whose Book
Is It Anyway? IP, collaborative business models, and questions of ethics
and creativity in digital publishing”. The event is part of London Design
Festival Digital Design Weekend at the Victoria and Albert Museum.*

*The event is free and open to all. Please register here: *
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/friction-and-fiction-ip-copyright-and-digital-futures-tickets-18521068013
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