Copyfight (ed by Phillipa McGuinness, NewSouth)

The idea for this book was a good one: to collect different voices on copyright in Australia today. All is not happy in creative-land, with practitioners reaping often small rewards in the new era of Amazon and ‘free’ downloads. A common reference point for contributors to this volume is the TV series ‘Game of Thrones’. Rather than pay for the show through regular channels (in this case Foxtel), Australians habitually download each new episode for nix via the internet. How did we become a nation of ‘pirates’ so oblivious to the time, effort and costs of creative endeavour in the digital age? Was it dissatisfaction with content providers, publishers, pay television and free-to-air networks, our own selfishness or something more structural, as academic contributor Sherman Young suggests, bound up with the internet and way it has evolved? Copyfight is about the connection between content, creativity and the internet and how we nurture and sustain writers, filmmakers, musical and digital artists, says the book’s editor Philippa McGuinness, with the testimony of artist practitioners reflecting independently on their plight and complementing a generous smattering of legal and academic expertise. Contributors deal with the historical and legal framework only cursorily. Miscellanies such as this are a mixed bag. Those seeking a full account will be disappointed, but in personal testimony we have a lucid raising of the issues in digestible bites. The global and the Australian perhaps warrant greater separation and there is little discussion of territorial copyright or the immense fracas that surrounded parallel importation of books a few years back.

David Dunstan is a senior research associate at Monash University, where he has taught Australian studies and publishing studies