Please let me win this one argument, my husband is a lawyer.

You will probably agree, the last couple of weeks have seen me a little bit demented trying to understand, maybe find perspective on, how people use digital media in ways that I have not exploited, or even tried.  Contentious, divisive, unresolved...

Now, Produsage – again, complex, but for me, there is some fun in this!  Where do I even start picking hilarious YouTube clips or photos from blogs where someone has taken something, made it into something else that is meaningful to them and posted it for people’s entertainment  or comment.  Too many to choose from.

 ‘These produsers engage not in a traditional form of content production, but are instead involved in produsage – the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement.’ (Bruns, A 2007)

I do have some questions though. 

Like, how do we assess the knowledge being built – how do we decide what to believe?  Bruns (2007) discusses that the paradigm shift from ‘Industrialist’ information provision to the information age means that we have to make way for and prepare for information to be produced in a collaborative and participatory manner.  To what end?  Do we become a people who says – “I saw on YouTube that it takes 30 times as much energy to boil an egg as to drive your car to McDonalds to buy one.”  Just as I championed the journalism profession, so too will I now champion academia!  I know that academia is adjusting to this new collaborative information age, but there must be checks and balances.  

I am sure everyone else has wondered, as I automatically did – who has the legal rights in the produsage process?  Who owns what?  Who gets credit for what is prodused?

Now I am no lawyer, but I am married to one.  I know…

Aaannnyhooo…  one of his team, a lovely and brilliant technophile, Leanne O’Donnell, who does much work on Social Media, Intellectual Property and Copyright law in Australia and overseas, told me that in the legal profession, produsage is often termed ‘User Generated Content’ (UGC) and says that this topic is under current review in various jurisdictions. ‘Canada for example last year introduced a UGC exception into their copyright law that allows for non-commercial ‘mash-ups’ etc.’

Google’s submission in November 2012 to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) review of adequate copyright exceptions and statutory licences advises that new laws have to include a flexibility and future proofing ‘to ensure greater availability of copyrighted material in socially and economically beneficial ways’  and claimed that the current Australian Copyright Act is ‘blocking creative and transformative uses of copyright works, such as mashups and innovative maps layers.’

This transformative use of all peoples’ content to create, what appears mostly entertainment, is certainly being taken seriously and will be an important part of law reform. 

One last thing. My husband is really lovely!  Oh and it would be great if you could tell me - is this post, with its links to other sources and little pictures embedded in it, produsage?  Is it teaching anyone anything?  Created some value?  You know, I must say, it has been a way to help me learn.  Uh – oh… sorry, it always comes back to that – it is all about me!

References

Bruns, A 2007, Produsage, Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition, pages 99-106, ACM New York, NY

Image source: Author unknown, viewed 4 February 2013, http://themetapicture.com/when-you-use-a-meme-in-real-life/