Ramon Lobato

Creative industries and informal economies: Lessons from Nollywood

Since the emergence of its video industry in the 1990s, Nigeria has pioneered an innovative and highly successful model of film production and distribution. Lagos is now home to the fastest-growing film industry in the world, which releases well over 1000 titles a year without assistance from the government, NGOs or international film festivals. This article analyses the rise of ‘Nollywood’ through the lens of current debates in creative industries research. The Nigerian video economy offers compelling evidence of the role of informal markets in creating efficient and economically sustainable media industries. Its success also has implications for debates around copyright and media piracy. I conclude that reading Nigerian video as an informal creative industry can be a useful way to rematerialize media studies in the overdeveloped world.

The Politics of Digital Distribution: Exclusionary Structures in Online Cinema

Abstract The hype around digital film distribution is now at fever pitch, with promises of a brave new world of instant delivery, unfettered consumer choice and new revenue streams for film-makers. Surveying the current array of commercial online video-on-demand (VOD) services, this article offers some critical reflections on these emerging circulatory models. The focus is on power relations within the online VOD industry and on issues of audience access and equity. The article argues that distribution should be a key concern for contemporary film researchers, given the power of distributors to determine the range of films available to viewers and the conditions under which they are accessible. While the ‘democratizing’ potential of online distribution may be appealing, it is important to recognize that digital delivery infrastructures may not result in any real diversification of film culture, that much of the Australian audience will be excluded from their reach and that the vast majority of online film consumption will continue to take place in the extralegal realm.

The cultural logic of digital intermediaries YouTube multichannel networks

How has YouTube evolved as a cultural and commercial infrastructure? What institutional forms has it produced? The present article takes up these questions through a discussion of multichannel networks (MCNs) and their role within the digital video system. MCNs are a new breed of intermediary firm that link entrepreneurial YouTubers with the advertising, marketing and screen production industries. This article considers the functions of MCNs vis-à-vis the existing constellation of screen industry professions, including talent agents, managers and media buyers, who perform similar functions offline. Combining structural analysis of the MCN industry with an assessment of its cultural impacts, I show how Google’s decision to open the YouTube back-end to third-party intermediaries is subtly changing the digital video ecology.

Rethinking genre studies through distribution analysis: issues in international horror movie circuits

The existence of any film genre depends on the effective operation of distribution networks. Contingencies of distribution play an important role in determining the content of individual texts and the characteristics of film genres; they enable new genres to emerge at the same time as they impose limits on generic change. This paper sets out an alternative way of doing genre studies, based on an analysis of distributive circuits rather than film texts or generic categories. Our objective is to provide a conceptual framework that can account for the multiple ways in which distribution networks leave their traces on film texts and audience expectations, with specific reference to international horror networks, and to offer some preliminary suggestions as to how distribution analysis can be integrated into existing genre studies methodologies.

The cyberlocker gold rush: tracking the rise of file-hosting sites as media distribution platforms

This article examines the content distribution practices and regulatory anxieties generated by a particular cloud computing technology: the cyberlocker, or one-click file-hosting site. Cyberlockers, which offer an easy and free way to share media files, are widely used for content piracy. Over the last decade, usage of cyberlockers has increased rapidly; however, an intellectual property crackdown in 2012 has had far-reaching consequences for the industry. In this article we provide a short history of this ephemeral digital technology before considering some questions it presents for current media studies debates about sharing and reciprocity. We argue that the cyberlocker, as a non-reciprocal sharing technology, represents a limit case for liberal theories of informational freedom.

Transnational Piracy Research in Practice: A Roundtable Interview with Joe Karaganis, John Cross, Olga Sezneva and Ravi Sundaram

The following is an edited transcript of an interview with lead investigators on the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies project. The discussion took place online in June 2011.

Informal Media Economies

This special issue of Television and New Media showcases current research on informal media production and distribution networks. Situated partly or wholly outside regulated, consolidated, and policy-governed audiovisual industries, the networks studied here include video circuits in West Africa, new media infrastructures in the Caribbean, user-driven streaming sites, and transnational VHS piracy. Together, these accounts provide glimpses of what may be best described as an interlocking set of informal media economies: zones of unmeasured and unevenly regulated media production and exchange, which articulate with conventional media systems in unpredictable ways.

An Introduction to Informal Media Economies

This special issue of Television and New Media showcases current research on informal media production and distribution networks. Situated partly or wholly outside regulated, consolidated, and policy-governed audiovisual industries, the networks studied here include video circuits in West Africa, new media infrastructures in the Caribbean, user-driven streaming sites, and transnational VHS piracy. Together, these accounts provide glimpses of what may be best described as an interlocking set of informal media economies: zones of unmeasured and unevenly regulated media production and exchange, which articulate with conventional media systems in unpredictable ways.

Geoblocking and global video culture

Geoblocking and Global Video Culture explores the cultural implications of access control and circumvention in an age of VPNs. Featuring seventeen chapters from diverse critical positions and locations – including China, Iran, Malaysia, Turkey, Cuba, Brazil, USA, Sweden and Australia. Contributors: Ramon Lobato, James Meese, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, Cameran Ashraf, Marketa Trimble, Adam Rugg, Florian Hoof, Roland Burke, Jinying Li, Cigdem Bozdag, Chris Baumann, Aneta Podkalicka, Chris Baumann, Sandra Hanchard, Vanessa Mendes Moreira de Sa, Hadi Sohrabi, Fidel Alejandro Rodriguez, Evan Elkins.

Informal Translation, Post-Cinema and Global Media Flows

This chapter provides an overview of the impacts that different kinds of informal distribution have upon film translation. From video bootlegging to torrents with SRT files, what does piracy mean for translation and translators? What are the material properties of particular distribution channels and to what degree do these lend themselves to translation between languages? What effect are new technologies (notably subtitling software) having on the availability of films in different languages?