Digital Economy Bill: Copyright: Continuing the Dialogue

21st Apr 2010; 17:30

Anderson Strathern LLP, 1 Rutland Court, Edinburgh

Guests most welcome; cost £10 per head
Professors Simon Frith (Edinburgh) and Lilian Edwards (Sheffield)

Professor Simon Frith assumed the Tovey Chair of Music at Edinburgh University in January 2006 having had an unusual academic career.  His undergraduate degree (from Oxford) was in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.  His Masters and PhD (from the University of California, Berkeley) were in Sociology.  He initially taught in the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick, before moving to Strathclyde University to become Director of the John Logie Baird Centre for Research in Film and Television and Professor of English Studies.  In 1999 he moved to the University of Stirling and a chair in Film and Media.   As an academic he was a founder member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and a founding editor of the journal, Popular Music, and the majority of his scholarly publications have been in this field.  As a journalist he started out as an editor of the pioneering British rock magazine, Let It Rock, and became rock critic for both the Sunday Times and the Observer.  He was a music columnist for the New York Village Voice from 1980-1995, and has chaired the judges of the Mercury Music prize since it began in 1992.    He has carried out a variety of research on the music industry and music policy.  From 1995-1999 he directed an ESRC Research Programme on Media Economics and Media Culture and is presently directing an AHRC funded project on the live music sector. He says that he “long ago realised that copyright was central to any understanding of the music business” and that the public interest is not necessarily the same as record companies’!

Professor Lilian Edwards, University of Sheffield, is well known for her blog “Pangloss” and will, perhaps along the lines of “the good, the bad and the ugly”,  address what she feels are    abnegation of due process;  collective punishment (the three strikes and you are out); site blocking and breaches of EU law; net censorship and the issues around aspects of the Bill being technically unworkable.  Add to this her concern that it appears lobbyists are controlling the process, rather than the legislators plus other concerns re lack of democracy and so on, so there is lively debate ahead.

£10 per head payable to secure registration (see booking form).

For further information contact Ann Packard