Luo Li [Coventry University]: Uncertain Future of Chinese Folk Music in Digitalisation
Abstract
Digital technologies bring huge changes in stimulating music creation, distributing music, and enhancing the audio-visual experiences of humans. Folk music, embracing ethnic minority groups’ unique culture, has also been transformed by the digital revolution. The digitalisation of folk music has opened an array of new opportunities to a wider audience, bringing interactive cultural exchange beyond geographical boundaries. Meanwhile, digital folk music has become a strong tool to erode traditional culture, derogating and diluting cultural identity through culture degradation, exploitation, and misappropriation. This presentation analyses the complex mechanisms protecting Chinese folk music in the digital age from an intellectual property perspective. It examines how digital technologies change the way Chinese folk music is being transmitted, used, and developed, and how China’s legislative protection and judicial practice respond to such changes and to the new complications in the folk music area brought on by digitalisation.
About the Speaker
Luo Li is an Assistant Professor in Law at Coventry Law School, Coventry University (United Kingdom). Prior to joining Coventry Law School, she had work experience at the Law and Legislative Advice Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2013. She is an Associate Editor of the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property in 2015-2017 and currently she is a Journal Article Reviewer at QMJIP. She is also a Grant Reviewer (sector of cultural heritages) at the National Social Science Academy in Poland, was a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen in 2016, and is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy in the United Kingdom. In 2020, Li was invited to deliver an intervention at the Conversation on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Policy organised by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and recently she has been nominated for the Excellence Award in Research 2020 at the Faculty of Business and Law of the Coventry University. Li maintains interdisciplinary research interests including intellectual property, cultural heritage, fashion design, information technology, media and social economic development. Her current research focuses on digital transformation and advanced technologies including the application of artificial intelligence in creative industries and its implications for intellectual property law and regulation. The relevant publication about intangible cultural heritages and music is: Luo Li, Intellectual Property Protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions – Folklore in China (2014, Springer).
