Democratic Ownership and Creator Sovereignty in Independent Film Streaming

This project investigates how cooperative governance frameworks can be applied to the design of creator-sovereign streaming platforms for independent film. It addresses two questions: how do existing cooperative and platform cooperative models handle the governance challenges of creative labour, including revenue distribution and data rights? And what design principles can be developed from the Centre for Decentralized Digital Economy (DECaDE) to inform governance architecture in decentralized streaming contexts?
The project proceeds through framework development. Drawing on cooperative law, platform governance literature, and creative labour economics, it synthesises existing models into design principles for creator-sovereign platform architecture. The output is a governance model that positions creative workers as owners of the infrastructure they depend on.
The research will be conducted at Edinburgh Law School under the supervision of Dr. Morshed Mannan, whose work on cooperative governance provides the legal foundation for this inquiry, and in collaboration with Dr. Caterina Moruzzi at Edinburgh College of Art, both within the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Moruzzi is a DECaDE researcher and Principal Investigator of the Insight and Foresight Unit for CoSTAR, a national creative technology R&D programme led by Goldsmiths in partnership with the British Film Institute, the University of Edinburgh, and Loughborough University.

Faculty Supervisor:

Lesley Istead

Student:

Partner:

University of Edinburgh

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Carleton University

Program: