Handbook

This course examines the regulation of the cyberspace, with a focus on the culture industries: Arts, Film, Broadcasting, Music, Gaming, Telecommunications and Social Media. Innovation and technological convergence creates opportunities for new and enhanced leisure and social activities, but these developments often concurrently raise issues across intellectual property, content regulation, defamation, broadcasting, and privacy laws. This course evaluates this intersection between legal, technological, political and economic issues, in addition to considering the role of and need for national law reform, international treaties, industry bodies and standards, and technologies of control.

Main topics

• Introduction to media regulation, intellectual property, privacy and defamation laws; trade barriers; national innovation policy; and global policies affecting the Internet and entertainment industries
• Big Media content online: entertainment franchises
• Google World: the rise of Google as search engine and beyond, and corresponding legal issues
• Social Media and User Generated-Content: The legal rights and responsibilities of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media users
• Technology as Liberation: the promise of technological convergence and the pitfalls of national regulation, including peer to peer file sharing and legal avenues for accessing content
• Consumer rights, property and virtual property rights.