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Intellectual property

The Consumption of Counterfeit Goods: ‘Here be Pirates?’

Jason Rutter - Wed, 20/05/2009 - 18:45
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Social science, policy and popular discourse around counterfeiting regularly position consumers of counterfeit goods as part of a technological elite or motivated by anti-capitalist or anti-corporate positions. In order to explore this construction and highlight its associated limitations, this paper presents quantitative data collected through postal and web-based questionnaires looking at the frequency, location and motivations for the purchase of counterfeit leisure items for consumers in the United Kingdom. The paper suggests the purchase and consumption of counterfeit goods is commonplace across a broader variety of age, gender and socio-economic status categories than often assumed. The study also highlights the value of viewing the consumption of counterfeit goods as social and situated, occurring within existing social networks and familiar locations, and as closely related to other consumption practices.

Productive users, intellectual property and governance: the challenges of computer games

Jason Rutter - Fri, 09/03/2007 - 21:07
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Computer games present challenges to intellectual property regimes that will become more widespread as interactive media, with their active, creative and productive users become more common. This paper explores how production has moved from linear to networked and recursive models, involving users as producers in a variety of ways. It suggests that intellectual property and copyright law are based on linear models unsuited to these new forms. The paper further explores the definition of content in the context of social software such as Massively Multi-user Online Games and raises issues pertaining to community governance by publishers, who have moved beyond their traditional role as managers of property rights and into the role of managers of communities.

Fan based production for computer games: User led innovation, the 'drift of value' and the negotiation of intellectual property rights

Jason Rutter - Fri, 09/03/2007 - 21:07
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Fan based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multimillion dollar computer games industry. The emerging production ecology that involves new kinds of distributed organisations and ad-hoc networks epitomises the ‘drift of value’ from producer to consumer and allows us to understand how user-led innovation influences the creative industries. But the ability to control intellectual property rights in content production is critical to the power structures and social dynamic that are being created in this space. Trainz, a train simulation game released by Brisbane developer Auran, which relies heavily on fan created content for its success is used as a case study. The licence agreements between Auran and the fan creators are analysed in order to understand how the balance between the commercial and non-commercial is achieved and how the tension between open networks of collaboration and closed structures of commercial competitive environments are negotiated. It explains the intellectual property issues involved and highlights how the interface between copyright and contract will have a critical impact on this example of user led innovation.

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