Resistance or Negotiation: An Australian Perspective on Copyright Law's Cultural Agenda

This article examines the legal, theoretical, and corporate discourses that underpin intellectual property regimes and argues that these legal framings are inadequate when it comes to regulating contemporary practices of creativity. Following the rise of the ‘produser’ (Bruns, 2008), intellectual property law needs to be reoriented. Rather than focusing on a discourse of resistance and buttressing an increasingly outdated concept of authorship, IP law must be open, both philosophically and legally, to the textual negotiations the Internet engenders. This article features an extended case study analysis of the Australian and United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which evidences the necessity for legal reform to reconceptualize the functions of author and user and criticizes the bilateral approach taken by the AUSFTA, arguing that in the end, political goals trumped any genuine consideration of the serious legal and cross-cultural issues surrounding the institution of intellectual property law.