Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

[Networked] Memory Institutions: Social Remembering, Privatization and its Discontents

2008; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.1085267

1556-5068

Guy Pessach,

Digital Rights Management and Security

Memory institutions are social entities that select, document, contextualize, preserve, index and thus canonize elements of humanity's culture, historical narratives, individual and collective memories. Archives, museums and libraries are paradigmatic examples for traditional memory institutions. Content-sharing platforms, social networks, peer-to-peer file-sharing infrastructures, digital images agencies, online music stores and search engines' utilities represent emerging novel entities with a de-facto derivative function as networked memory institutions. This article includes an in-depth inquiry regarding the manners in which digitization and networked communication technologies implicate on the identity, structure and attributes of society's memory institutions. More specifically, I focus on privatization processes that networked memory institutions are increasingly undergoing. My basic hypothesis is that the transformation from tangible/analogue preservation to digitized cultural retrieval tends to result in intense privatization of society's memory institutions - both traditional and novel ones. Among other aspects, I examine the fundamental role of copyright law in facilitating and supporting these dynamics of privatization.