Society and Information Research Group

The next SIRG seminar will take place on Wednesday 27 April at 2.30 pm. More details follow.

SIRG Seminar, Open University

Wednesday 27 April 2011 @ 2.30 pm
David Gorham Library (first floor Venables, N1015)

Copyright in a Digital Age

Jeannie Rees

Abstract

Music copyright legislation has generally become stricter and more techno-centric over recent years. The media industries became aware of challenges associated with lobbying for legislative change whilst fully engaged in the policing and shutting down of pirate activities on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) online file sharing services.  This copyright evolution developed once digital technology allowed the ease of creation and distribution of perfect copies. The recent emergence of highly popular P2P networks has called into question property rights theory that ownership of copyright is the only instrument that can affect the incentives to invest in the creation of cultural goods. Copyright, as a tool to incentivise investment and value creation, is often criticised for its limitations in a digital age and some argue that we should be moving beyond the limited conceptual framework of copyright to a legal framework that scrutinises the relationships any individual or entity has with information, culture or creativity.  These circumstances lead to a questioning of the ways in which copyright legislative developments and Digital Rights Management have affected technological innovation and commercial incentives for the creation of musical works.

Infinite Bandwidth Zero Latency (IBZL) Seminar

Presented by Simon Bell, Steve Walker, Clem Herman, Keith Straughan and Shaun Fensom

Date: Wednesday, 13 April, 2011 Time: 12.00-2.00pm

Venue: David Gorham Library, N1015,Venables Building, Open University, Milton Keynes

Abstract

IBZL is a thought experiment. It starts from the question: what if bandwidth (and latency) in networks like the internet didn’t matter any more? What would become possible?

The capacity and speed of the internet and related networks has increased exponentially over the last 20 years but the change has come in steps, steps that have unleashed waves of innovation. First generation broadband technology gave millions of users an ‘always-on’ connection to the net for the first time. This led to unforeseen, unanticipated and disruptive new applications like Wikipedia and YouTube. Next generation broadband may similarly trigger a wave of disruptive applications, with the potential for almost unlimited bandwidth and radically reduced latency. In this practice based research project we try to imagine. We try to anticipate the sort of new applications and services that might develop and, more importantly, what new technologies will become possible. The IBZL project has sought to identify new possibilities through positing a world with effectively infinite bandwidth and zero latency? IBZL tries to create the conditions to start that imagining process, and can contribute to thinking about the OU’s own work in such a world.