The Matter of Intellectual Property: Studying the Economic, Political and Cultural Nodes of the Contemporary Media Industries

This issue of Media Mutations addresses the theme of intellectual property (IP) in the audiovisual industries, recognizing its centrality from legal and economic as well as cultural and creative perspectives. IP represents a constitutive element of the audiovisual industry since the origins of cinema, through the birth and massification of television, up to the current revolutions triggered by streaming platforms and generative artificial intelligence. The volume contributes to the contemporary academic and political debate, characterized by concerns related to the economic power of American platforms that make IP ownership a condition of their investments, and by the uncertainties created by the use of AI. These tensions have led to high-profile strikes in the United States and intense lobbying activities in Europe to obtain legislative protections for creative workers. The collected articles analyze various dimensions of the relationship between IP and audiovisual industries: the legal implications of generative artificial intelligence and authorship issues; content strategies of streaming platforms such as Paramount+ and Netflix; narrative repurposing practices (remakes, reboots, requels, legacyquels); the role of fan agency and piracy; the importance of literary IPs for the transnational circulation of television series; and industrial logics that in contexts such as South Korea subordinate human wellbeing to IP protection. Through case studies from American, European, and East Asian industries, the volume highlights how IP represents the central commodity in contemporary media industries, destined to acquire further relevance in the years to come.