Recommended reading for any person interested in the way new technologies, above all the internet and digital content, are affecting the legal treatment of copyrightable intellectual property and related business methods and practices.
Professor Litman's work stands out as well-researched, doctrinally solid, and always piercingly well-written.-JANE GINSBURG, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property, Columbia UniversityLitman's work is distinctive in several respects: in her informed historical perspective on copyright law and its legislative policy; her remarkable ability to translate complicated copyright concepts and their implications into plain English; her willingness to study, understand, and take seriously what ordinary people think copyright law means; and her creativity in formulating alternatives to the copyright quagmire. -PAMELA SAMUELSON, Professor of Law and Information Management; Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California, BerkeleyIn 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts.In this enlightening and well-argued book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society?Litman's critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork. She argues for reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.This paperback edition includes an afterword that comments on recent developments, such as the end of the Napster story, the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, the escalation of a full-fledged copyright war, the filing of lawsuits against thousands of individuals, and the June 2005 Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case.Jessica Litman (Ann Arbor, MI) is professor of law at Wayne State University and a widely recognized expert on copyright law.
The reign of paper files would seem to be over once files are reduced to the status of icons on computer screens, but Vismann's book, which examines the impact of the file on Western institutions throughout history, shows how the creation of order in medieval and early modern administrations makes its returns in computer architecture.
Scholars from communication and media studies join those from science and technology studies to examine media technologies as complex, sociomaterial phenomena. In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that these technologies are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, looking at them instead as produced by and embedded in distinct social, cultural, and political practices. Communication and media scholars have increasingly taken theoretical perspectives originating in science and technology studies (STS), while some STS scholars interested in information technologies have linked their research to media studies inquiries into the symbolic dimensions of these tools. In this volume, scholars from both fields come together to advance this view of media technologies as complex sociomaterial phenomena. The contributors first address the relationship between materiality and mediation, considering such topics as the lived realities of network infrastructure. The contributors then highlight media technologies as always in motion, held together through the minute, unobserved work of many, including efforts to keep these technologies alive. Contributors Pablo J. Boczkowski, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Finn Brunton, Gabriella Coleman, Gregory J. Downey, Kirsten A. Foot, Tarleton Gillespie, Steven J. Jackson, Christopher M. Kelty, Leah A. Lievrouw, Sonia Livingstone, Ignacio Siles, Jonathan Sterne, Lucy Suchman, Fred Turner
This Handbook explores the largely unchartered territory of media, technology, and organization studies, and interrogates their foundational relations, their forms, and their consequences. The chapters consider how specific mediating technological objects such as the Clock or the Smartphone help us to create organizational form.
The digitizing of intellectual property and the ease and speed with which it can be copied, transmitted, and globally shared poses legal challenges for traditional owners of content rights, for those who create new media, and for those who consume new media content. This informative and accessible introductory text, written for students of media and communication, provides a comprehensive overview of the complex legal landscape surrounding new media and intellectual property rights. The authors present theoretical backgrounds, legislative developments, and legal case histories in intellectual property law. Copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, personal torts (rights of publicity, defamation, privacy) are examined in U.S., international, and virtual contexts. Suitable as a primary text for courses focusing on intellectual property law in multimedia/new media, this book will also be useful for courses in media law. The information presented in the book is supplemented by freeforafee.com, a blog providing updates to students and instructors alike. A glossary of key terms is also provided.
Copyright governance is in a state of flux because the boundaries between legal and illegal consumption have blurred. Trajce Cvetkovski interrogates the disorganizational effects of piracy and emerging technologies on the political economy of copyright in popular music, film and gaming industries.
This book analyzes a range of social contexts in which human decisions shape technology in the market economy. It comprises a critical review of both a select research literature and in-depth historical studies. Material is drawn from many social science disciplines to inform the reader of the reality of taking decisions on innovation.
Media literacy educators rely on the ability to make use of copyrighted materials from mass media, digital media and popular culture for both analysis and production activities. Whether they work in higher education, elementary and secondary schools, or in informal learning settings in libraries, community and non-profit organizations, educators know that the practice of media literacy depends on a robust interpretation of copyright and fair use. With chapters written by leading scholars and practitioners from the fields of media studies, education, writing and rhetoric, law and society, library and information studies, and the digital humanities, this companion provides a scholarly and professional context for understanding the ways in which new conceptualizations of copyright and fair use are shaping the pedagogical practices of media literacy.
Can a free press survive in an era of free content? An “entertaining and well-written” examination of copyright law, its history, and its purpose (New York Law Journal). You can’t copyright facts, but is news a category unto itself? Without legal protection for the “ownership” of news, what incentive does a news organization have to invest in producing quality journalism that serves the public good? Can a free press survive in the era of free content? This book explores the intertwined histories of journalism and copyright law in the United States and Great Britain, revealing how shifts in technology, government policy, and publishing strategy have shaped the media landscape. Publishers have long sought to treat news as exclusive to protect their investments against copying or “free riding.” But over the centuries, arguments about the vital role of newspapers and the need for information to circulate have made it difficult to defend property rights in news. Beginning with the earliest printed news publications and ending with the Internet, Will Slauter traces these countervailing trends, offering a fresh perspective on debates about copyright and efforts to control the flow of news. “A well-written, thoughtful book, demonstrating how copyright law has struggled to keep up with the development of news culture, setting out the historical context in great detail and supported by much research, and with interesting conclusions and predictions for the future. It is unreservedly recommended.” ––European Intellectual Property Review