*With apologies for cross-posting* The Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation present an evening of public lectures by Joe Karaganis (Social Science Research Council, New York) and Ravi Sundaram (Sarai/Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) on the topic of media piracy and informal economies. 1. MEDIA PIRACY IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: Joe Karaganis This presentation will introduce a major collaborative study of music, film, and software piracy conducted in India, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, and Mexico between 2007 and 2010. The study focuses on the relationship between the licit and illicit media markets in these countries, and on the emergence of enforcement as a primary concern of the knowledge economy. Joe Karaganis is Media, Technology and Culture program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York. His work focuses on changes in the organization of cultural production in the digital context and on the intersection between information policy and social practice. He is editor of the collection Structures of Participation in Digital Culture (SSRC, 2007). 2. POSTCOLONIAL MEDIA AFTER THE INFORMAL: Ravi Sundaram Informality has arrived on the postcolonial media landscape with a kinetic force in the last two decades. More media is now distributed through bazaars, small markets, street vendors and neighbourhood retail that ever before. Informality is seen as a threat by large media industries, who see it as distributing pirate media or simply indifferent to the Law of Property. Informality, once a grey zone of paralegal production and work for economists, now presents media research with a series of new research questions. What are the stakes for media after the informal? What is the relationship between the practices of postcolonial informality and the larger landscape of new media? Is there a connection between the street market and the world after Wikileaks? This lecture will suggest that we are entering a new media condition today that may disrupt many of the received models of cultural modernity of the last 100 years. Ravi Sundaram is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi and Co-Director of the Sarai programme on Media and Urban Culture. He is the author of Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism (Routledge, 2009). Respondents: Stuart Cunningham (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT), Kathy Bowrey (Faculty of Law, UNSW), Julian Thomas (Institute for Social Research, Swinburne). DATE: Thursday March 24, 2011 TIME: 6pm-8pm VENUE: Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria (enter via 179 La Trobe St) CONTACT: rlobato@swin.edu.au / (03) 9214 8637 All welcome. No RSVP necessary http://piracy.ssrc.org/about-the-report/ http://www.sisr.net