Interview With Adrian Corker (About Copyright)

Interview with Adrian Corker: - 26/01/2012

Associate Lecturer School of Humanities and Performing Arts (ALD) (Faculty of Arts (ALD))

Interviewer: Holly C
Interviewee: Adrian Corker

Holly: Do you think that copyright poses a threat on participatory culture or participatory culture poses a threat on copyright - if so, how so?

Adrian: By participatory culture you mean people being able to get involved with creators of original work?

Holly: Yeah, the whole culture that’s being spawned from the Internet; the making, sharing, not just passively consuming, actively wanting to be a part of it…

Adrian: Yeah, it does, obviously I mean if you take the kind of old media model it’s not - it doesn’t have a way of making money out of that. Participatory culture accepts rationalizing it as some kind of promotional device – which means that they’ve fought it right from the off as opposed to other industries like the gaming industry which obviously understands a bit more about new media, and the music industry tried as hard as possible in criminalizing its consumers  - in doing that they have kind of devalued what they do really, so if you push that model what the old media is trying to do, it could …But with the Internet the cat’s out of the bag, you’re never going to be able to stop it, and there are attempts to do that at the moment. I think most people who make work and who are artists understand the benefits of participatory culture – everyone Facebooks and Tweets now (well except for me, I don’t ) and people use it as a means of building up networks and connections and getting people to be aware of what they do, and people give away things for free in order to get exposure, so most artists are much more pragmatic about it than the business. But the business doesn’t deal in pragmatism, business is geared to make money and they have formulas - they don’t like to stray from the formulas because it sends their spreadsheets into chaos. Hopefully there will be a balance struck – that’s what we’ve always hoped for. At the moment there is too much  - sort of old media versus new media - there’s a battle going on between them, and people who make content- are the kind of victims of both, and in a way both have got it slightly wrong. I don’t believe in everything being free – like if you go in a supermarket – we’re culturally conditioned to understand that food isn’t free, it’s a resource. I don’t see how things created by human beings using time, expertise, energy and resources should be given for free just because we can now digitize the content and spread it on the internet, so you know new media hasn’t got it totally right – I love the innovation of the new media but its also – you know- we’re needing? to invent new models which will be able to give artists sustainable livings, and old media - what the old media’s based on is a – servant relationship which is – you sign to them – you cannot work for anyone else – so that’s obviously the eighteenth/seventeenth century model – so there’s huge room for some pragmatic shift that would serve everyone.

Holly: Yeah. In light of the recent events where do you stand on the whole SOPA / PIPA debate?

Adrain: It’s the same I think. Like I said it’d old media versus new – they’re fighting for their own basic new business models or old versus new business models and you know – I think artists need to be protected. I don’t think iTunes or Apple or – a lot of new media giants – you know - Google – they have the same inherent moral problems in different areas as the old ones. Privacy, totalitarian dominance of the markets  - this idea that new media is good and old media is bad is just too simplistic and there’s problems with both, the prob with that bill is like a lot of old media companies who lobbied Washington particularly Hollywood, have convinced Washington of their own importance – of how much money they bring in - which I think has been vastly overrated?  - according to what I’ve read – Hollywood don’t bring in as much as the figures suggest but it’s how they account their money? There’s an accounting quirk in how they account the money they generate – they’ve over inflated their worth to the economy. Vastly. And in doing that, you know, probably because they’re all going to the same parties – they’ve got Washington’s ear – and obviously their fighting is very Draconian – sort of bill – fighting to have it implemented. I don’t agree with it, but then I don’t agree with just letting everything sort of float about – I mean, in fifty years time copyright might not exist  - but there’s peoples livings relying on it at the moment and you cant just suddenly overnight sort of cut it all off – which is also potentially happening - well it is happening – peoples incomes have been shredded to pieces in the last five years. So –

Me: So do you think the copyright laws need to be changed and updated to accommodate the - for the Internet?

Adrian: Well yeah – the problem is that – yeah – I do  - you’re getting into a whole thing now where the copyright laws as they exist they’re about a certain time where you own stuff-  a lot of the body of work that’s worth money is now running into the public domain territory. According to the film industry Disney had their bill extended to keep mickey mouse ??… bill twenty years extended for like Disney’s work and that kinda stuff – they’re trying to extend their ownership and its like sand falling through their hands – they cant hold onto it forever. I just think the trouble with copyright is that it was originally intended to protect the work of the person who created it – but because of how the economy and intellectual property works  - the owners of the intellectual property quite often aren’t the creators anymore. These corporations who have used business models and this very unfair servant - slave type contractual relationship, which I’ve just mentioned, to kind of make money and on owning peoples intellectual property – you give it to them  - they give you some money, or the chance to record an album – or make a film, and they’ll give you the money to do that, and then they own everything and make money out if it so – its original intention is changed – and the creators aren’t really the people who are benefiting so much from it  - they haven’t made all the money – the creators – oh people say ‘oh artists, or musicians – they must make so much money from the copyright laws’, but the people who do – are the business not the artists so I’d like to see the business cut down drastically, because they don’t do enough to warrant the profits they actually make – and like – to have the artists have a bigger proportion of the pie?  Like - I haven’t really thought about what could be done to improve it, in terms of concrete suggestions, but I think the middle man should go – what gets freed up by them going should be more portion more to the creators of content.

Holly:  Thanks that was great! 

Note: I decided to add this interview transcript to my blog as it was a really great experience. Adrian Corker is not only a lecturer at Plymouth University but is also an expert on the topic of copyright, being a media content producer in his own right. I found this experience both insightful and informative and wanted to share it. This was also used as part of my dissertation process (Info on how to get a copy of my dissertation here) and may benefit future media students, be used as a resource, or simply prove an interesting read for people curious about copyright.