IME · Informal Media Economies

The aim of this proposal is to study the conflicts between different stakeholders about the future of intellectual property regulation. At the moment there seems to be an irreconcilable difference between bottom-up social norms governing informal media economies (copynorms) and top-down copyright regimes. This project plans to map the values, norms and self-regulatory approaches of individuals and online communities participating in exchanges in informal media networks to guide and inform policy formulation and possible shift in the formal regulatory frameworks. A better understanding of the bottom-up means of creating, protecting, using of intellectual properties may help to close the aforementioned gap and result in a more egalitarian, commonly accepted and up to date system of copyright regulation.