[Reader-list] Fwd: Call for articles: Geoblocking and Global Video Culture

[sumandro]

IP address-based blocking (geoblocking), which restricts access to
online content based on a user’s location, has become a popular strategy
for managing digital media flows and maintaining separation of national
markets. A diverse array of online video platforms – from YouTube and
Netflix to BBC iPlayer, Telemundo and MTV Asia – use geoblocking to
filter international audiences, localise content and satisfy
rights-holders’ DRM requirements. For people outside the target markets,
the end result is often a familiar error message: “this video is not
available in your region”.

Geoblocking is changing the nature of the open Internet, locating users
within national market- spaces and fencing-off enclaves of content. But
this geography of control is not absolute. In recent years the
appearance of user-friendly circumvention tools – including VPNs
(StrongVPN, Witopia, HideMyAss), DNS proxies (Getflix, Unblock.us) and
browser plug-ins (AddTele, HolaUnblocker) – has unleashed a wave of
unauthorised cross-border media activity, allowing audiences to easily
access streaming, news and sports services from other countries.

The edited collection Geoblocking and Global Video Culture takes these
practices as the basis for a critical discussion of the Internet’s
changing cultural geography. The book’s focus is on online video
platforms, broadly defined, and the spatial regulation and circumvention
practices that are emerging around them. Drawing on insights from media
and internet studies, law, geography, and mobilities research, it aims
to offer up-to-date analysis and critique of international digital video
culture in the age of geo-location.

A further aim of the collection is to explore linkages between different
forms of spatial Internet regulation and circumvention. Many
circumvention tools used for unauthorised streaming are also used by
millions of people to counteract government site blocking. In Turkey,
Iran, China and many other nations where popular video and social
networking platforms are regularly blocked, circumvention has become a
mainstream practice. Probing this connection,

Geoblocking and Global Video Culture seeks to critically examine the
location-masking practices of a variety of communities, including
price-sensitive consumers, early adopters, filesharers, privacy
advocates, tourists, overseas workers and political dissidents.

Geoblocking and Global Video Culture will be published digitally in
early 2016 in Institute of Network Cultures’ Theory on Demand series, as
a Creative Commons-licensed PDF and ebook.

*<<< SUBMISSIONS >>>*

We are now calling for short, timely and succinct essays (max. 5000
words) that respond to the topic of geoblocking in provocative ways
and/or explore its political, historical, legal and cultural contexts.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

* geographies of Internet content and/or consumption
* the spatial organisation of digital media rights
* geo-targeting, algorithmic recommendation and platform curation
* circumvention practices in specific media sectors (TV, film, games,
live sports, etc)
* histories of regional controls, parallel importing and unauthorised
media consumption
* national/local media and diasporic populations
* futures of post-broadcast television

If you are interested in contributing, please send a 500 word abstract
and brief bio to geoblockingandgvc at gmail.com
<mailto:geoblockingandgvc at gmail.com> by 28 April. Authors will be
notified of the outcome within 2 weeks. Final chapters are due on 23
August, to ensure timely publication of our findings. Submissions should
adhere to the INC style guide, available at http://tinyurl.com/kczbz25
<http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2014/10/Styleguide_INC__2014.pdf>

We also have a limited number of slots available for case study chapters
that explore circumvention practices in specific countries. Please
contact the editors for further details if you have research to share on
this topic.

Email enquiries to the editors are most welcome. For further information
please contact geoblockingandgvc at gmail.com
<mailto:geoblockingandgvc at gmail.com>

-----------------------

Sumandro Chattapadhyay

Research Director
The Centre for Internet and Society
<http://cis-india.org/>

<http://ajantriks.net/>
<http://tinyletter.com/ajantriks/>
<http://ajantriks.github.io/sumandro_public_key.asc>