Digital Media Research Centre

2014 will be a pivotal year for sex workers around the globe. With increasing international visibility, the movement for sex worker rights is rapidly gaining momentum. Simultaneously, regressive laws, discrimination and abolitionist agendas pose real dangers to our communities, our work, our health and our safety. We are witnessing an international commitment to ending stigma and discrimination. However, every win for our human rights has been an uphill battle and significant barriers face us ahead. This article outlines the human rights issues affecting sex workers in Australia and makes recommendations for reform.

This article first appeared in the September 2014 issue of the Newsletter of the Human Rights Law Working Group of the Public and Professional Interest Division of the International Bar Association (Vol 1, No 2, Part II), and is reproduced by kind permission of the International Bar Association, London, UK. © International Bar Association.

Sex workers in Australia are making important interventions into the production practices of pornography. Dissatisfied for working for other producers, sex workers are moving behind the camera and producing their own content in collaboration with other sex workers. Seeking further control over their working conditions and representation, sex workers have shifted porn's focus from the product to the process. These 'performer-producers' are engaging in sex worker rights activism through creating performer-centred spaces and pioneering best-practice labour standards.

The past 25 years have seen a ‘turn to culture’ in copyright scholarship. This cultural turn has produced an expansive account of copyright’s disadvantages with respect to qualitative cultural and political goals such as: promoting democracy, individual self-authorship, expressive diversity, and a more inclusive creative and discursive culture. A common view among proponents of the cultural turn is that copyright stands in the way of the democratization of creative and discursive spheres online. This article challenges that view. Online ‘free’ content economies — characterized by peer production, decentralized selection, and peer to peer content sharing — have not lived up to the hopes of cultural turn thinkers. I focus on structural matters (structures of incentive and structures of power), critically applying descriptive and normative frameworks of the cultural turn. Proponents of the cultural turn have been concerned about copyright’s role in concentrating cultural power. They sh...

A spate of recent accidents and a lawsuit involving Tesla's 'selfdriving' cars highlights the growing need for meaningful accountability when harms are caused by AI systems. Tort (or civil liability) lawsuits are one important way for victims to redress such harms. The prospect of tort liability may also prompt AI developers to take better precautions against safety risks. Tort claims of all kinds will be hindered by AI opacity: the difficulty of determining how and why complex AI systems make decisions. We address this problem by formulating and evaluating several options for mitigating AI opacity that combine expert evidence, legal argumentation, civil procedure, and Explainable AI approaches. We emphasise the need for explanations of AI systems in tort litigation to be attuned to the elements of legal 'causes of action'-the specific facts that must be proven to succeed in a lawsuit. We take a recent Australian case involving explainable AI evidence as a starting point from which to map contemporary Explainable AI approaches to elements of tortious causes of action, focusing on misleading conduct, negligence, and product liability for safety defects. Our work synthesizes law, legal procedure, and computer science to provide greater clarity on the opportunities and challenges for Explainable AI in civil litigation, and may prove helpful to potential litigants, to courts, and to illuminate key targets for regulatory intervention.

A spate of recent accidents and a lawsuit involving Tesla's 'selfdriving' cars highlights the growing need for meaningful accountability when harms are caused by AI systems. Tort (or civil liability) lawsuits are one important way for victims to redress such harms. The prospect of tort liability may also prompt AI developers to take better precautions against safety risks. Tort claims of all kinds will be hindered by AI opacity: the difficulty of determining how and why complex AI systems make decisions. We address this problem by formulating and evaluating several options for mitigating AI opacity that combine expert evidence, legal argumentation, civil procedure, and Explainable AI approaches. We emphasise the need for explanations of AI systems in tort litigation to be attuned to the elements of legal 'causes of action'-the specific facts that must be proven to succeed in a lawsuit. We take a recent Australian case involving explainable AI evidence as a starting point from which to map contemporary Explainable AI approaches to elements of tortious causes of action, focusing on misleading conduct, negligence, and product liability for safety defects. Our work synthesizes law, legal procedure, and computer science to provide greater clarity on the opportunities and challenges for Explainable AI in civil litigation, and may prove helpful to potential litigants, to courts, and to illuminate key targets for regulatory intervention.

This paper critically evaluates the European Commission's proposed AI Act's approach to risk management and risk acceptability for high-risk AI systems that pose risks to fundamental rights and safety. The Act aims to promote "trustworthy" AI with a proportionate regulatory burden. Its provisions on risk acceptability require residual risks from high-risk systems to be reduced or eliminated "as far as possible" (AFAP), having regard to the "state of the art". This criterion, especially if interpreted narrowly, is unworkable and promotes neither proportionate regulatory burden, nor trustworthiness. By contrast the Parliament's most recent draft amendments to the risk management provisions introduce "reasonableness", cost-benefit analysis, and are more transparent about the value-laden and contextual nature of risk acceptability judgements. This paper argues that the Parliament's approach is more workable, and better balances the goals of proportionality and trustworthiness. It explains what reasonableness in risk acceptability judgments would entail, drawing on principles from negligence law and European medical devices regulation. And it contends that the approach to risk acceptability judgments need a firm foundation of civic legitimacy: including detailed guidance or involvement from regulators, and meaningful input from affected stakeholders

This paper critically evaluates the European Commission's proposed AI Act's approach to risk management and risk acceptability for high-risk artificial intelligence systems that pose risks to fundamental rights and safety. The Act aims to promote "trustworthy" AI with a proportionate regulatory burden. Its provisions on risk acceptability require residual risks from high-risk systems to be reduced or eliminated "as far as possible", having regard for the "state of the art". This criterion, especially if interpreted narrowly, is unworkable and promotes neither proportionate regulatory burden nor trustworthiness. By contrast, the Parliament's most recent draft amendments to the risk management provisions introduce "reasonableness" and cost-benefit analyses and are more transparent regarding the value-laden and contextual nature of risk acceptability judgments. This paper argues that the Parliament's approach is more workable and better balances the goals of proportionality and trustworthiness. It explains what reasonableness in risk acceptability judgments would entail, drawing on principles from negligence law and European medical devices regulation. It also contends that the approach to risk acceptability judgments needs a firm foundation of civic legitimacy, including detailed guidance or involvement from regulators and meaningful input from affected stakeholders.

In 2011, the SMTOWN Paris concert, featuring the roster of singers under the SM Entertainment label, became a media sensation after European fans protested at the Louvre Museum for additional tickets (Kang 2011). This event led to an extension of the original tour schedule and it showed that Korean popular culture, or more specifically South Korean popular music (K-pop) was gaining a global presence. Since then, K-pop has continued to expand, with more K-pop singers holding successful concerts within and outside of the East Asian region (Shim 2006). Although these celebrities of K-popsingers who are known as 'idols'existed long before the Korean Wave started, it was only in the recent years that they were 'discovered' and became part of the dominant discourse. The term 'idol' refers to young singersin their teens to twentieswho have gone through the idol training system under an entertainment management agency (Cha and Choi 2011, Shim 2013). As the idols gained global presences, accumulating fan bases outside of Korea and breaking into overseas music charts, they became an intregal part of the Korean Wave (Choi and Park 2015). Despite their heightened popularity, these young celebrities must deal with negative associations of the 'idol' label. They are criticised by the press and general public for being mass-produced by the entertainment companies and thus lacking authenticity; but, at the same time, they have gained social legitimacy as an exportable commodity that can uplift national pride by being at the forefront of the Korean Wave (Oh and Lee 2013). Focusing on the contested position of these celebrities, this cultural report aims to deconstruct the meanings of idols through an analysis of the television show King of Mask Singer (2015a). This singing competition show gained recognition because of the performances of the idol participants (Bang 2015). By analysing the representation of idol singers on this particular show, it is argued here that this show reassures that idols truly have earned their place in the Korean Wave. Idols were first discovered in the Korean Wave as a result of their popularity overseas: they have now been rediscovered for their talent and show that these idols deserve their fame. The K-pop idol star system The current K-pop landscape arose with the industrialisation of the K-pop industry in the late 1990s. Sooman Lee, founder of one of top entertainment agencies, SM Entertainment, is credited with introducing the idol star system in Korea (Shim 2006).

Web dramas, which are original serialized dramas that are released primarily on online platforms, are a recent development of digital content in South Korea. As web dramas are intended for mobile viewing environments, this study examines how distribution influenced this emerging form. Particularly, it argues for the consideration of the power of distribution, which does not happen as an afterthought or separate from other areas, but can wield influence on the production, finances, and other business practices of web dramas. Audiences are envisioned as viewing web dramas on the go, so web dramas were only several minutes per episode with simple storylines to maintain the audiences' attention. The insufficient revenue policy of the existing platforms have led web dramas to seek other alternatives within traditional media structures, where they are positioned primarily as another platform for television industries to explore or rely on the branded entertainment strategy, catering to the business sponsors' demands. In the recent times, newer platforms and production companies specializing in web dramas have appeared, and this article concludes that there is still the potential for web dramas to independently establish themselves as a new digital form in the future.

""In Creative Industries in China: Art, Design and Media I provide the reader with some of the main debates over definitions of creativity and creative industries in China as well as interpretations in East Asia and developing countries. The book is an extension of my previous work, expanding well beyond ‘cultural creativity’ into emerging debates about innovation policy, copyright reform and cultural trade. I discuss shanzhai communities, cultural system reform, policy processes, cultural security, soft power, and China’s cultural innovation timeline.  In regard to the overlapping domains of art, design and media I look at origins of creative endeavour, international influences, processes of commercialisation and attempts to move China’s creativity into international markets. The key themes are:
• Tensions continue to play out between political culture and commercial creativity in China;
• Policy makers, academics and even many ordinary citizens hope that the nation will become a ‘creative nation’ rather than a producer of cheap imitative products shipped to overseas markets;
• The cultural and creative industries are viewed by many Chinese scholars as the means by which China will radiate its ‘soft power’ to the world. ""

Challenging assumptions that have undermined critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media industry analysis, Keane, Fung and Moran give a groundbreaking account of television on the post-broadcasting era, and how programming ideas are creatively redeveloped and franchised in east Asia. In this first comprehensive study of television program adaptation across cultures, the authors argue that adaptation, transfer and recycling of content are multiplying to the point of marginalizing other economic and cultural practices. they also show that significant remodeling of local TV production practices occur when adaptation is genuinely responsive to local values. examples of East Asian format adaptations include Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the Weakest Link, Coronation Street, and Idol.