Defining authorship in user-generated content : copyright struggles in The Game of Thrones

SARIKAKIS, Katharine, KRUG, Claudia and RODRIGUEZ-AMAT, Joan (2015). Defining authorship in user-generated content : copyright struggles in The Game of Thrones. New Media & Society, 542-559.

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Abstract

The notion of authorship is a core element in antipiracy campaigns accompanying an emerging copyright regime, worldwide. These campaigns are built on discourses that aim to ‘problematize’ the issues of ‘legality’ of content downloading practices, ‘protection’ for content creators and the alleged damage caused to creators’ livelihood by piracy. Under these tensions, fandom both subverts such discourses, through sharing and production practices, and legitimizes industry’s mythology of an ‘original’ author. However, how is the notion of authorship constructed in the cooperative spaces of fandom? The article explores the most popular fandom sites of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series that inspires the TV-show Game of Thrones and argues that the notion of authorship is not one-dimensional, but rather consists of attributes that develop across three processes: community building, the creative and the industrial/production process. Here, fandom constructs a figure of the ‘author’ which, although more complex than the one presented by the industry in its copyright/anti-piracy campaigns, maintains the status quo of regulatory frameworks based on the idea of a ‘primary’ creator.

Item Type:	Article
Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018:	Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute > Communication and Computing Research Centre
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815612446
Page Range:	542-559
Depositing User:	Joan Rodriguez-Amat
Date Deposited:	17 Dec 2015 14:22
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 11:33
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11077

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