The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 7 Volume Set

2

Media Production and Information Policy

Growth Through Replication

Patrick Burkart and Lucas Logan

ABSTRACT

This chapter uses a stakeholder analysis to examine the legal regime governing intellectual property rights in cyberspace and those who try to shape current policies. Celebrating what they call “the Celestial Jukebox,” information policymakers in the European Union (EU) have adopted copyright maximalist standards, which follow a model dictated by Hollywood for the United States. This chapter explores the legal initiatives and mechanisms required for this transformation, the political resistance and opposition to these reforms, and the changing relationships between media producers and consumers that the reforms seek to legitimate.

In the United States, a legal “change of state” (Braman, 2007) from industrial to informational occurred in the north at the end of the twentieth century, as the digitization of telecommunications networks was completed and the Internet subsumed other forms of communication. Five media conglomerates and a handful of powerful software and telecommunications companies demanded the legal guarantees for this structural transformation in the early 1990s, and the legislative work was completed around 1998. The European “change of state” is still occurring, and so it is instructive to observe – and somewhat surprising to discover – that most important aspects of the restructuring resemble the US model.

Basic conflicts among private interests pervade ...