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Deutsch: Kultur: Globaler Wandel in Produktion und Konsum

The Green MEPs Eva Lichtenberger, Sandrine Bélier and Helga Trüpel hosted an event on 7 June 2012 in the European Parliament on the global changes in production and consumption of cultural goods.

The first speaker at the event was Frédéric Martel, writer, journalist, researcher and book critic who worked at the French Embassy in Boston as head of the French cultural and academic services. The mutation is due to two different phenomena: globalisation and digitalisation. The novelty is that the developing countries are taking part in those phenomena and they have to adapt to both globalisation and digitalisation at the same time. The approach to digitalisation is different in Europe from that in the developing countries. In Europe the content industries are adopting a defensive behaviour against digitalisation, while in the developing countries they see it as an opportunity. The creative industry is changing, but one should not forget that the big American studios also finance small independent studios. A new debate on diversity is appearing because even though there is globalisation, the cultural issues stay national. Countries like Brazil do not have the capacity to function by the US and European system of copyright.

The second panellist was Philippe Aigrain, co-funder of la Quadrature du Net. He introduced his speech by defending the legalisation of file sharing and the necessity to find a new financing system – such as a global license. But he focused his speech on looking at the reality of the cultural production and the example of creative writing as a new production opportunity. Today, the non-market practices of individuals are playing an important role even more than the selling and licensing of content, he said. Internet should not be seen as a distribution channel but a a place of cultural, creative and expressive activities. Internet is a creation tool. There is a huge textual production with blogs, microblogs and so on, that allow fair trade publishing favouring both authors and readers. It is however true that this cannot apply to all media.

The last speaker was Lucy Montgomery, from Queensland University of Technology (Australia). She spoke about the Chinese market. New models are emerging in China. She took the examples of music, film and fashion in which even though there is piracy and counterfeit, the market is booming and people consume a lot, but differently. Getting completely rid of copyright is a crazy idea, but there is a necessity to understand the co-evolution of innovation and copyright which creates a complex eco-system.

Webpage of the event (7.06.2012)
http://www.greens-efa.eu/global-changes-in-the-production-and-consumpt...

Recorded stream of the event (7.06.2012)
http://greenmediabox.eu/archive/2012/06/07/culture/

(Contribution by Elena Cantello - EDRi intern)