[rohrpost] CfP: Pirate book

[Tilman Baumgärtel]

Call for Papers: The Pirate Book.
Piracy and Other Inadmissible Approaches towards Intellectual Property 
Rights

Due to the spread of the internet and the proliferation of means of 
digital reproduction, piracy has become a global force to be reckoned 
with. Whatever gets published in digital format – music albums, movies, 
books, software – will be available for free download on the internet in 
a matter of hours, on the black markets from Moscow to Manila, from Sao 
Paolo to Shanghai in days, if the local pirates see a market for it.

It is not just records and movies, though that are getting pirated by a 
restless international industry that employs millions. Clothes, apparel, 
computer games, cell phones, watches and drugs are copied, and these 
knock-offs are not just sold in Third World Countries (where they are a 
particular tourist attraction to Western travelers), but increasingly 
also in the West/Global North.

The rise of piracy in the last decade has been blamed for the downfall 
of the international music and film industry as well as the decline of 
whole national cinemas in countries like Cambodia or the Philippines. 
But at the same time, piracy has become a business that gives agency to 
traders that previously had no access to the international market. The 
part that pirated software played in the rise in particular of China, 
for instance, can hardly be over-estimated.

And piracy is a cultural force: film directors from developing countries 
all over the globe have openly credited pirated DVDs that gave them 
access to international art house movies not available in their 
respective countries as important in their development as directors. 
Universities in many countries would have no text books if it wouldn’t 
be for book piracy.

Nevertheless, the few books that so far have been published on this 
subject are sensationalistic accounts of the 
`Piracy-sponsors-terrorism`-ilk. They more often than not simply condemn 
piracy in a way that gives no justice to the complexities of the topic.

The proposed book will try to develop a more nuanced view on this 
phenomenon. Therefore, we are seeking submissions of new and unpublished 
papers for an anthology on the global phenomenon of piracy.

The reader will not focus on the rights and wrongs of piracy, but rather 
on how piracy actually works in different parts of the world. However, 
it will have a special focus on the rationale of piracy in developing 
countries, and discuss piracy in the frame work of digital culture and 
phenomena such as Free/Open Source Software, Creative Commons etc. A 
strong emphasis will be on media piracy. However, articles on other 
topics such as fashion or pharmaceutical piracy are also welcome.

We are in particular looking for essays on
1. piracy in China, South America and Eastern Europe,
2. Internet Piracy (P2P/file sharing net works),
3. closed trackers such as Karagarga.net,
4. book piracy (How comes the vendors of pirated books on the riverside 
of Phnom Penh always have the latest version of the “Lonely Planet”?),
6. historic instances of product piracy (not sea piracy)
7. modified, "improved" and localized knock-offs of iPhones from China etc
8. piracy of pharmaceutical products and fashion apparel
9. and the cultural consequences of piracy.

Please send your abstracts of 300 words in length with a brief bio 
(including e-mail) and a work sample (a published essay) by August 15 to 
the editor

Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel
Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

mail at tilmanbaumgaertel dot net.

The final essays should be between 20.000 and 50.000 characters (with 
spaces).

Deadline for abstract: 15. August 2010




-- 
Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel
Royal University of Phnom Penh
Department of Media and Communication
http://southeastasiancinema.wordpress.com/
http://www.tilmanbaumgaertel.net/