Matellart's article mainly discusses about the correlations between digital piracy and the underground cultural globalization. The scholar moves away from the traditional ethical arguments on the digital piracy and focus the discussion more on the social, cultural and economical contexts of such phenomenon, and the correlations between the expanding digital piracy and the cultural globalization.
In the article, while not denying the negative impacts that digital piracy has from the perspective of industry growth and the intellectual property protection, yet the scholar argued that the criminalization of such phenomenon is mainly to protect the benefits of certain organizations and the industries they represent. The scholar argued that the underground social, cultural and economic networks not only allow the growth of unauthorized reproduction of the visual products--more importantly --they also make the cultural globalization possible in these developing countries.
Follow the scholar's research, I think the free reproduction of the visual products has not only meet the short terms needs of feeding the audience in developing countries, but also has cultivated such appetites that enable the audience in developing countries to appreciate and look for the cultural products from the globe, and therefore, even more advanced--that the local investment and visual arts industry would take initiatives to produce something indigenous and grow up!
Think about Bollywood and the Nollywood (Nigeria), they are the examples of such path!
I think this article look into the digital piracy issue really from a humanity perspective and actually argued that this phenomenon --if appropriately controlled--can contribute positive impacts to the cultural globalization and help the developing countries to grow their industry from copying it to innovating it.
From my understanding, this is a better way to look at the global black market of the visual products. But yes, further research and study should dig into setting rules and regulations to control such kind of unprotected intellectual and information flow as that the expected "cultivation" function can be performed.
How do you think cultural imperialism fits into the argument? The argument you present is that pirated material is positive because it exposes people to cultural products. But if those cultural products are all American or, almost all American, does this not fit into this not a new facet of cultural imperialism?
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