SOVEREIGNTY AND SOFTWARE

Abstract

This article will critically appraise two approaches to cultural policy. The first focuses upon the need for a national cultural policy in order to establish a national “common culture” among its citizens, through measures to promote the arts and popular media sectors, and set limits to the flow of imported materials into the nation. This is what has been termed the “sovereignty” model, and has historically been the driver of cultural policy debates. The second approach, which is called the “software” approach, aims to create cultural infrastructure and other environmental factors to promote a creative economy, whether at local, regional, national or supra‐national levels. It questions the historical divides between “culture” and “industry”, and between “creativity” and “innovation”, and is focused upon the development of future ideas and creative concepts. It draws upon the very different conditions associated with the development of software to those of established arts and media sectors, and aims to extend the “software” model more widely into cultural and creative industries policy.

KEYWORDS:

• cultural policy
• citizenship
• national culture
• globalisation
• creative industries
• Creative Commons
• open source

Notes

1. This does not, of course, capture the full range of forms of post‐Second World War cultural policy. In particular, drawing upon Vestheim’s (1996) and Craik’s (1996) work, it places the focus principally upon cultural policy based upon the state‐as‐architect model rather than those traditions of the more hands‐off, state‐as‐patron model, as has been the case in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the evolution of the French state‐as‐architect model is very useful in illustrating the broader tensions arising in cultural policy in a range of nations.

2. A series of key national information policy statements were made in the mid‐1990s, including: the United States government’s National Information Infrastructure Task Force (1993); the European Union’s Europe and the Information Superhighway (Bangemann Report) (1994); Singapore’s IT2000 – A Vision of an Intelligent Island (1992); the Canadian government’s The Canadian Information Highway: Building Canada’ Information and Communications Infrastructure (1994); Japan’s Program for Advanced Information Infrastructure (1994); the Australian government’s Creative Nation (DCA 1994) and Networking Australia’s Future (1995) reports; the Malaysian government’s Multimedia Super Corridor strategy (1995); Korea’s Infomatization Strategies for Promoting National Competitiveness (1996); and the OECD’s Global Information Infrastructure – Global Information Society report (1997). For the most part, these statements were focused upon the development of broadband infrastructure to support national ICT sectors and more effective diffuse the benefits of ICTs; statements such as Australia’s Creative Nation, which focused upon multimedia content development, were the exception rather than the rule. For a review of these information policy statements, see Northfield (1999); Barr (2000).

3. The underlying principle of open software is not simply that it is freely available, but that the source code is made available to all users, who can modify it accordingly. The concept of “free software” has been associated with Richard Stallman, who founded the Free Software Foundation and developed the GNU General Purpose Licence in 1983. Stallman and his followers have largely pursued a moral case that free access to software and source code is a basic right of a free society. While most open source software initiatives are consistent with the principles of free software, open source advocates tend to stress the technical superiority of the software developed by such means rather than the moral right to free software, and argue more of an economic case for adopting open source models. In practice, both groups can be seen to pursuing broadly similar objectives.

4. The German term for cultural industries, “Kulturwirtshcaft”, would generate concerns that the nature of an industry – a site for mass, industrialised forms of production – constitutes the antithesis of culture. By contrast, Finland avoids distinguishing cultural activities on the basis of their forms of production, accepting that all forms of cultural production aimed at maximising audiences constitute a part of its cultural industries. The term “creative industries” has thus far only been taken up by policy makers in Britain, but even here there remains some concern about the heterogeneity of industries included and the radical differences between them in terms of their relationship to cultural policy (MKW 2001, pp. 27–28; cf O’Connor 1999; Flew 2005b).

5. Work undertaken by the Creative Industries Research and applications centre (CIRAC) at the Queensland University of Technology on the creative industries in Brisbane draws attention to the difficulties involved in mapping these industries onto traditional industry classification frameworks such as the Australia and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) (see Cunningham et al. 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Terry Flew

Terry Flew is Head of Media and Communication in the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology.