Recommended books: a summary

It has been a while since I recommended some books, so get your reading list in early for your summer holidays.

Some suggested works include: Hinduja's 2006 title 'Music Piracy and Crime Theory'; Tapscott and Williams' account of crowdsourcing 'Macrowikinomics' (2010); David's systematic 'Peer to Peer and the Music Industry' (2010); Bently et al.'s critical 'Copyright and Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Critique' (2010); Higgins and Marcum's criminological text 'Digital Piracy: An Integrated theoretical approach' (2011); Kernfeld's historical account of music piracy 'Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929' (2011); Byrne's music industry insider opus 'How Music Works' (2012); Elkin-Koren and Salzberger's review of the digital economy 'The Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age' (2013); and Wikstrom's comprehensive overview of the multifaceted music industry in 'The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud' (2013).

Should keep you busy.

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References

Bently, L., Davis, J. and Ginsburg, J.C. (Eds.). (2010). Copyright and Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Critique. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Byrne, D. (2012). How Music Works. Edinburgh, Scotland: Canongate.

David, M. (2010). Peer to Peer and the Music Industry. London, England: Sage.

Elkin-Koren, N. and Salzberger, E.M. (2013). The Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age. New York, NY: Routledge.

Higgins, G.E. and Marcum, C.D. (2011). Digital Piracy: An Integrated Theoretical Approach. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Hinduja, S. (2006). Music Piracy and Crime Theory. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.

Kernfeld, B. (2011). Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929. Chigago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Tapscott, D. and Williams, A.D. (2010). Macrowikinomics. London, England: Atlantic Books.

Wikstrom, P. (2013). The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud (2nd edition). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

New special issue of the journal 'Popular Communication' on Piracy

This one slipped past me.

From February 2015, the journal Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture published a special issue titled 'Piracy and Social Change'. You can access it here.

Haven't had time to read it yet, but it looks exciting; the reach is considerable, exploring a variety of research areas. There are also some familiar names from past entries on this blog.

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New book on technology and youth culture

I recently reviewed a book titled 'Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging and New Cultural Configurations', edited by Andy Bennett and Brady Robards. It's great.

You can access my review here and purchase the book here.

To paraphrase the review, the book finds that the internet plays a positive role in youth culture, and the eclectic variety of contributions from different authors sheds light on some very specific aspects of mediated youth culture. These chapters are categorised under the following headings: Online and offline identities; Engagement and creativity; and Bodies, spaces and places.

Three of the five chapters on 'Engagement and creativity' concern music. Of interest, Raphael Nowak highlights how different types of technology can complement each other, with different technologies meeting different preferences. He explains: The reception of music is currently characterised by a multiplication and coexistence of various music artefacts that all possess their own features and characteristic forms of appeal for listeners’ (p. 150).

The book, overall, comes highly recommended (in case that was not already obvious).

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References

Brown, S.C. (2015). Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging and New Cultural Configurations [Review of the book Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging and New Cultural Configurations, by A. Bennett and B. Robards (eds.)]. Popular Music, 34(2), 349-351.

Bennett, A. and Robards, B. (Eds.). (2014). Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging and New Cultural Configurations. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Nowak, R. (2014). Understanding Everyday Uses of Musical Technologies in the Digital Age. In A. Bennett and B. Robards (Eds.), Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging and New Cultural Configurations (pp. 146-164). Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Recommended reading on: legal and philosophical underpinnings of digital piracy

Given the ultimate aim of this web resource is to encourage independent reading on various aspects of digital piracy, this entry marks the first in a new occasional series on recommended reading. First up, legal and philosophical underpinnings of digital piracy.

Edwards et al. (2013) provide an excellent overview of legal aspects of digital piracy, including arguments for copyright reform. Awarded the 'Best of the Web thought leader awards' by both Business Week and Forbes, Techdirt, founded by Michael Masnick (who features prominently on music piracy research blog) provides an influential and critical commentary on 'government policy, technology, and legal issues. Established in 2002, the website musiclawupdates is also a recommended resource on legal issues.

Also, check out Pykalainena et al. (2009) provide a good overview of the open source movement philosophy in practical terms. Hardy's 2012 book 'Download! How the internet transformed the record business' covers recent laws such as HADOPI in some detail. Bainbridge (2009) provides an excellent overview of intellectual property, encompassing digital piracy.

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References

Bainbridge, D.I. (2009). Intellectual Property (7th edition). Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.

Edwards, L., Klein, B., Lee, D., Moss, G., Philip, F, (2013). Framing the consumer: Copyright regulation and the public. Convergence, 19(1), 9-24.

Hardy, P. (2012). Download! How the internet transformed the record business. London, England: Omnibus Press.

Pykalainena, T., Yang, D. and Fang, T. (2009). Alleviating piracy through open source strategy: An exploratory study of business software firms in China. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 18(4), 165-177.