Vaidhyanathan – Copyrights and Copywrongs
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York: New York University Press, (2001). Print. Introduction V. notes that IP law is constantly shifting; however, it always remains behind the cultural and technological advances that precede it. Because IP law is such a murky area the issue of copyright and IP tend to be based more on “ethical assumptions and cultural... Read More
Patry – Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars
Patry, William. Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Introduction P. begins by highlighting how language is not a transparent medium: it both is a vehicle for thought and eht means by which we think. As such it does convey our views but it also works to be suasive to others. P. claims that at the core of this book is a singular argument: an unjustified expansion of copyright law has occurred because of... Read More
Woodmansee – Genius and the Copyright – 200th Post!
Woodmansee, Martha. “Genius and the Copyright.” The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 35-55. Print. Woodmansee tethers the concept of “author” to the 18th century writers who sought to earn a living from selling their writings to a rapidly expanding reading public. W. claims that in the Renaissance the author was composed of two distinct concepts: 1) a craftsman... Read More
Hydras on the Intranets
Yesterday a fairly sizeable raid on servers hosted in Europe was conducted by police forces. Officers in Belgium coordinated the raid in multiple other countries including Sweden (of course!), the UK, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, and so on. Interestingly, as TorrentFreak reports, the police actions were directed at SCENE release groups responsible for much of the pirates software, games, audio, and film on the internet. At the... Read More
Peters – Piracy of IP
“Piracy of Intellectual Property.”Statement of Marybeth Peters.The Register of Copyrights before the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary. 25 May 2005. U.S. Senate, 109th Congress, 1st Sess. 13 July 2009. <http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat052505.html>. Peters recognizes that it is not realistic to end piracy globally or in the U.S. Two elements in the protection of copyright: a) legal framework that... Read More
