As digital affordances change the possibilities for creative practice and related business practice, long-standing tensions in copyright policy surface. Professor Patricia Aufderheide, a 2017 Fulbright Scholar at QUT, is presenting a Distinguished Visitor Lecture on whether Australian policy encourages self-censorship in a digital era.
The Australian government has repeatedly raised the question of expanding exceptions to copyright monopolies, which would provide more flexibility for creators, tech companies, software designers and consumers. But we lack research about the actual behaviour of creators, which would help policy makers understand the implications of analog-era policy for creators themselves in a digital environment. Indeed, the interests of consumers have often been pitted needlessly against those of creators. Aufderheide's research explores creator behaviour in relation to the creator's copyright understanding, in order to reconnect creator experience to questions of innovation. This talk will share early results.
About the speaker
Patricia Aufderheide is a 2017 Fulbright Scholar at QUT, working on copyright and creative innovation in Australia and New Zealand. She is a tenured University Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact, where she continues as Senior Research Fellow.
Her books include Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (University of Chicago), with Peter Jaszi; Documentary: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford), The Daily Planet (University of Minnesota Press), and Communications Policy in the Public Interest (Guilford Press). She has been a John Simon Guggenheim fellow, has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival and received numerous journalism and scholarly awards.
This lecture is proudly supported by QUT Business School (Dynamic Capabilities of Innovation and Change High-Potential Research Group), and Institute for Future Environments research about transforming innovation systems.