Bureau for Open Culture: On Symptoms of Cultural Industry (2011)

On Symptoms of Cultural Industry investigates the role of artistic and cultural production in relation to the economic and social life of North Adams, Massachusetts. Through original research interviews with employees of Sprague Electric–the manufacturer that originally occupied the massive industrial complex that is today MASS MoCA–and in response to living in this city, the work comprehensively manifests as performance, video, installation and a book. It forms an intimate portrait of a city that has transformed from an economy of manufacturing goods and materials to increasingly manufacturing culture and information.

By James Voorhies, with Timothy Nazzaro, Nate Padavick, Rachel Sherk, Cassandra Troyan
Presented as part of Open Engagement in Portland, Oregon, in May 2011, and at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, in July.
32 pages

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Lillian Ross: Picture (1952/1988)

In the spring of 1950, when New Yorker staff writer Lillian Ross heard that John Huston was planning to make a film of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, she decided she would follow the movie’s progress “in order to learn whatever I might learn about the American motion-picture industry.” What resulted was Picture, which Newsweek has called “the best book on Hollywood ever published.” Picture received raves from the worlds of film and literature in equal measure for its unforgettable portrait of the language, the ways, and the preoccupations of Hollywood: Charlie Chaplin called Picture “brilliant and sagacious” and legendary editor William Shawn termed it “the definitive book on the Hollywood community.” Little wonder, then, that when the Top 100 Works of U.S. Journalism of the Twentieth Century were chosen by the New York University Department of Journalism and a distinguished panel that included David Brinkley, Pete Hamill, Jeff Greenfield, Mary McGrory, and Morley Safer, Picture had an honored place on that list.

Originally published in The New Yorker
Publisher Faber and Faber, 1998
ISBN 0571191924, 9780571191925
386 pages

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Joe Karaganis (ed.): Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (2011) [EN, RU, ES, CN]

“Media Piracy in Emerging Economies is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.

Based on three years of work by some thirty-five researchers, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies tells two overarching stories: one tracing the explosive growth of piracy as digital technologies became cheap and ubiquitous around the world, and another following the growth of industry lobbies that have reshaped laws and law enforcement around copyright protection. The report argues that these efforts have largely failed, and that the problem of piracy is better conceived as a failure of affordable access to media in legal markets.

“The choice,” said Joe Karaganis, director of the project, “isn’t between high piracy and low piracy in most media markets. The choice, rather, is between high-piracy, high-price markets and high-piracy, low price markets. Our work shows that media businesses can survive in both environments, and that developing countries have a strong interest in promoting the latter. This problem has little to do with enforcement and a lot to do with fostering competition.””

Publisher The Social Science Research Council (SSRC), 2011
Distributed under a Consumer’s Dilemma license
ISBN 978-0-98412574-6
440 pages

PDF (English, added on 2018-5-11)
PDFs (4 languages, from publisher; updated 2015-5-14)

See also Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education, 2018.