Exploring the new trends in culture production and consumption across the world is necessary to be able to build the future policies needed to promote creation and access to knowledge. While the issue of copyright and the Internet has often occupied the debates in the European Parliament during the past years, offering a very narrow approach to industrial and social realities, we instead decided to broaden the focus in order to better understand the changes and challenges. We, thus, invited several analysts and experts, journalists, researchers and writers, who will speak about the results of their investigations and reflection; from Hollywood to China, from Australia back to Europe and to Brussels...

 

The conference is organized by MEPs Sandrine Bélier, Eva Lichtenberger and Helga Trüpel

 

- Frédéric Martel, author of Mainstream

- Philippe Aigrain, author of Sharing

- Lucy Montgomery, author of China’s Creative Industries

- Johanna Gibson, author of Creative Selves 

 

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is a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council-funded Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. Her current work explores the role of intellectual property in processes of innovation and change in creative industries' business models.

 

Her book, China’s Creative Industries: Copyright, Social Network Markets and the Business of Culture in a Digital Age, (Edward Elgar, 2010) is an outcome of her post-doctoral fellowship, which was funded by the Australian Research Council’s Federation Fellowship program.

 

is a writer, journalist, researcher and a book critic, even though he has had, and still has, some academic and even official positions. His background is multidisciplinary : he holds a PhD in sociology and several graduate degrees in philosophy, political science and law. From 2001 to 2005, he was the head of the French cultural and academic services in the French Embassy in the US, based in Boston. He wrote Theater (La Découverte, 2006) and an overview on the American culture and art policy : De la culture en Amérique (Gallimard, november 2006). In 2010, he wrote : Mainstream, on the global cultural war (Flammarion ; this book is translated in a dozen languages and countries). Frédéric Martel has been professor at Sciences-Po Paris and at the HEC’s MBA. Since oct. 2007, he is the editor of the website nonfiction.fr, an important French review of books on line.

 

is the Chief executive officer of Sopinspace, Society for Public Information Spaces. In the past, Philippe Aigrain worked at the European Commission where he was Head of Sector "Software Technologies" in the unit "Technologies and Engineering for Software, Systems and Services" of the Information Society Technologies R&D Programme. He was trained as a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, and holds a Doctorate and the Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches from University Paris 7. From 1972 to 1981, he worked in software engineering research labs of software companies. He was a research fellow at U.C. Berkeley in 1982. Since then, and before joining the European Commission in 1996, he headed research teams in the field of computer processing, indexing, retrieval and interaction for audiovisual media (video, music, still images). He is the author of many articles and papers on the economy and sociology of information exchanges. His last book Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age was published 2012 (Amsterdam University Press). He is also the co-founder of La Quadrature du Net and regularly writes a blog (paigrain.debatpublic.net).

 

is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, where she is also Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute. She is also the Director of the Intellectual Property Institute, a research charity. She is Chair of the Intellectual Property Office Expert Advisory Committee on Trade and Development and a member of the DG-Research and Innovation expert panel on international knowledge transfer. Johanna holds first class degrees in cultural and critical theory, animal sciences, and law. Before joining CCLS, Johanna practised law in Melbourne, Australia at Allens Arthur Robinson, specialising in Intellectual Property, Media and Communications Law and Competition Law.

 

Her research centres on intellectual property law, cultural theory, traditional knowledge and development. She has been appointed a Visiting Professor at the World Intellectual Property Organization Academy (WIPO).