Creating, infringing, sharing and helping yourself: two tempting events

The Copyright Clearance Center’s OnCopyright 2014 takes place on 2 April, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm on the 40th floor of the NY Academy of Sciences at 7 World Trade Center. You can learn all about it from its web page here.  According to information supplied,

"It’s a one-day symposium where we bring together people who create, publish, re-purpose and re-invent content to answer the question everyone’s asking: what’s next? From disruptive innovation to legislative evolution, the copyright conversation is getting interesting… "

A bevy of participants, including the driven, the inspired, the well-informed and the distracting, will be chaired by Robert Levine, journalist and author of Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back. Apart from food and drink, there's a 3D printing demo by MakerBot and an original song composed and performed in real-time with “One Hundred Songs in a Day” artist Matt Farley. Those who can't attend in person can stream it here.

The lovely location of Stationers' Hall is the venue of 11 April 2014, 3-6 pm, for a CREATe Report Launch: ‘A review of the causes and impacts of unlawful file sharing’, starring Steven James Watson, Daniel John Zizzo and Piers Fleming [they must have run out of middle names by the time they got to no.3].  According to the registration bait:

"Using systematic reviewing techniques drawn from the medical sciences, a team of behavioural economists and psychologists from the University of East Anglia has undertaken a scoping review of all evidence published between 2003-2013 into the welfare implications and determinants of unlawful file sharing. Articles on unlawful file sharing for digital media including music, film, television, videogames, software and books, were methodically searched; non-academic literature was sought from key stakeholders and research centres. 54,441 sources were initially found with a wide search and were narrowed down to 206 articles which examined human behaviour, intentions or attitudes. 

Whether unlawful file sharing confers a net societal cost or benefit to welfare remains unclear based on the available evidence, with both of the approaches employed – (1) looking at the association between sales and unlawful file sharing, and (2) examining people’s willingness to pay with and without the possibility of unlawful file sharing – suffering from serious limitations. This conclusion casts doubt on approaches which strengthen the civil enforcement system to meet the challenges of the internet revolution, at least without clearer evidence of demonstrable benefits of specific measures". 

The programme also features a panel response with speakers from creative economy sectors as well as intermediaries, users and policy makers. Full details and registration can be sorted out by clicking here.