DURATION OF THE PROJECT: September 2005-August 2009

Digitisation has rendered all information expressible in lines of zeroes and ones and has made communication at the speed of light almost trivial. New digital technologies, the proliferation of networks and the ubiquitous online environment significantly change the traditional business and market models, including novel forms of copyright protection and repositioning of market players. There is an emerging and ever-strengthening concentration of market power horizontally, as well as vertically – along the entire value chain. The music and film industries and essentially all content industries are thus faced with serious implications.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: 

At the centre of the eDiversity project were the implications of digital technologies upon content industries, the resulting shift in the distribution of cultural content from traditional channels (such as cinema theatres, books, music discs and analogue broadcasting) towards digital environments and the impact of this shift upon the legal protection of cultural diversity. The plethora of questions arising in this context was analysed against the background of the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the decisions taken in the framework of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 

In the context of the overall NCCR "Trade Regulation", an intrinsic goal of individual project (IP) 7, eDiversity, was to overcome the existing fragmentation in the field of content regulation, in particular with regard to the protection of cultural diversity in digital networked environments. As an integral part of Research Cluster B ‘Unresolved Regulatory Issues’, the eDiversity projects sought to examine the unaddressed current and potential effects of new digital technologies upon cultural content and to develop regulatory models for coherent media regulation on a global level.

The approach of eDiversity was essentially interdisciplinary and encompassed tools from law, economics, political science, media science and sociology.

OUTPUT: 

• Burri, Mira, User Created Content in Virtual Worlds and Cultural Diversity (January 1, 2009). in Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity, Christoph Beat Graber and Mira Burri-Nenova, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010, pp. 74-112.
• Burri, Mira, The New Audiovisual Media Services Directive: Television without Frontiers, Television without Cultural Diversity (November 11, 2007). Common Market Law Review, Vol. 44, Issue 6, 2007, pp. 1689-1725.
• Burri, Mira, Trade and Culture in International Law: Path to (Re)Conciliation (December 2, 2009). Journal of World Trade, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2010, pp. 49-80.
• Burri, Mira, Trade and Culture: Making the WTO Legal Framework Conducive to Cultural Considerations (March 29, 2010). Manchester Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2008, pp. 3-39.

TEAM: 

Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Christoph Beat Graber; Co-Leader: PD Dr. Mira Burri

MORE INFORMATION:

Fyler eDiversity