Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America: Rethinking Creativity and the Common Good

Description

Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America is the first sustained effort to present an alternative framework for understanding piracy and contemporary challenges to global discourses on intellectual property (IP) in the Americas. While piracy might just look like theft and derivative reproduction from the perspective of many right-holders, the contributors to this volume go beyond this economic-driven logic and show how practices of copying are in fact practices of reinvention that reflect the rich social networks and forms of creativity, authorship, commerce, and consumption that characterize informal economies. From a perspective informed by contemporary scenarios in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, and the United States, they engage in a discussion of alternatives that―predicated on the importance of protecting culture―allow for other ways of conceiving prosperity at local, national, regional, and global levels. Examples discussed include video games, clothing, trinkets, music, film, TV, and books. Designed to help understand the broader implications of IP and piracy for the field of Latin American studies, this book will be a major contribution to Global South studies, as well as to the growing bibliography on globalization, informal markets, and piracy. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgments List of contributors Introduction Latin America and the Global South The View from the Americas This Volume Bibliography 1. How Trinkets Became Counterfeits: Value and Intellectual Property in a Low-Income Market in Brazil Introduction From Marginal to Criminal: Camelódromos as a Problem in Brazil The Value of Worthless Things Native Notions of IP Trading Counterfeits Conclusion Note Bibliography 2. The Piracy Problem: Indigeneity, Hybridity, and the Racial Politics of IP Enforcement in Guatemala Indigeneity and IP Ethics and Aesthetics in the “Piracy” Trade Old Problem, New Pirates Whiteness and Racialized Hybridity Conclusion Note Bibliography 3. Piracy and/as Legitimate Business 1. Access to Digital Technology Is a Basic Requirement for Participation in Twenty-First-Century Culture, and Piracy Democratizes Access to Global Information Society 2. Piracy, Copyright, and IP Are Culturally Contingent Concepts 3. Definitions of Software Piracy Are Often Vague, Overly Inclusive, and Fail to Distinguish It from Other Software Development Conventions and Practices 4. IP Law Is Founded on Antiquated Concepts That Are Insufficient for Dealing with Interactive Digital Media 5. The Software Industry Nurtures Piracy 6. The Software Industry Benefits from Piracy Bibliography 4. Piracy as Media Practice: The Informal Market of Music and Videos in Peru The Technological Evolution: From CDs and DVDs to Netflix and YouTube Cultural Practices: As Global as Local Economic Practices: Beyond Reproduction The Matriceros Understanding Piracy Conclusion Notes Bibliography 5. Context as Content in Chilean Community Media Chilean Community Television Cultural Production and the “Uncreative” Collective Authorship in the Democratization of Chilean Media Sampling in the Digital (Television) Era Curating as Participatory Creation Conclusion: Context as Content Notes Bibliography 6. “Feeling Pirate” as Media Affect in Mexican American Experience “Piracy” Beyond Legal Definitions The Spaces of the Piratical Pirate Affects and the Immigrant Experience Conclusion Bibliography 7. From Piracy as a Crime to Piracy as a Necessity: Territorial Inequalities and the Socially Necessary Market in Brazil Introduction The Pirate Who Lingers in the Seas The Pirate Who Replicates Materiality The Pirate of Digital Contents Knowledge as Property and Piracy as Crime: The Geopolitics of Innovation From Crime to Necessity: Tecnobrega and Creativity Final Thoughts: Piracy as a Use of Technique Notes Bibliography 8. Book Piracy in Chile and the Proletarianization of Literature in Pedro Lemebel Book Piracy in Chile Pedro Lemebel and Book Piracy in Chile Lemebel, the Economies of the Literary, and their Proletarianization Bibliography 9. Pirate Book Aesthetics in Contemporary Argentina Pirate Borges Property and Propriety Organizing Piracy Pirate Aesthetics Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography 10. Between Abundance and Appropriation: Indeterminate Critiques of Global IP Schemes Contradictory Impulses Expanding the Metaphor: Beyond Protection and Dissemination Notes Bibliography 11. The Creative Copy: Agency and Fashion at a Market for Counterfeited Garments Introduction On the Legality–Illegality Distinction Methodological Remarks The Rise of Informal Wholesale Supply Marketplaces of Fast Fashion The Downstream Garment Entrepreneur Interpreting Buyers’ Ideas of “Fashion” Conclusion: Fashion and Uniformity Bibliography Appendix: A Primer on Intellectual Property. Index