Journal Articles

User production and law reform: a socio-legal critique of user creativity

---

This article argues that recent scholarly attempts to prescribe creative agency to a user subject rarely consider how the user functions in a broader legal and cultural context. I suggest that the user is a complex subject defined by various cultural and legal discourses, following a critical body of scholarship that calls for a more nuanced approach to the issue of user production. I show how the user-a term often treated neutrally in the user production literature-is a subject that is already defined by extant legal discourses like copyright. This argument is developed in a detailed analysis of Canadian copyright law and the Copyright Modernization Act, a reform to Canadian copyright law, which attempted to address the phenomenon of user production. These examples show the user is embroiled in a broader set of creative politics where being defined as a user or an author can have commercial implications. I suggest greater specificity and qualification around the role and scope of the user is needed in future scholarship examining the phenomenon of user production.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Media Culture & Society

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications., 2015

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0163-4437

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Volume 37, Issue 5 Juli 2015, pages 753-767

Subject(s)

Legal Reform
User-generated content
Copyright law
Legal subjectivity

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment