The History of Copyright

This is a collection of academic essays that seeks to establish legitimacy for a relatively new intellectual discipline - the study of the history of copyright. The editors in their introduction maintain that new academic disciplines arise when it generally becomes felt that there is need for them. It is certainly true that many of the technological advances of the last twenty years (in the digitization, reproduction, re-purposing, transmogrification, and distribution of various media) have brought issues of copyright, ownership, and intellectual property rights into sharp... more >>

Remix: The Copyright Wars

[This is a Xmas present to all my blog readers - a posting on the most inspiring book I have read in 2009.]

Lawrence Lessig is a lecturer in law at Harvard University and a leading authority on intellectual property rights in the digital age. He helped to found the Creative Commons movement, and he's a former member of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. His works are a passionate defence of the rights of the individual to the creativity of the past, and a crusade against those forces which try to limit the free exchange of information. This is the latest in a long line of books he has written in support of such causes - explaining in non-legal language the way in which human rights have been eroded by the vested interests of big business. Whilst upholding the right of all content originators to make a living from what they create, he believes that the current copyright laws restrict the free exchange of information. He also argues that all creativity builds on the creativity of the past, and it is modern technology which has democratised and speeded up the process... Read more >>

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Content - copyright, DRM, and open sources

Cory Doctorow is a young Canadian freelance writer and web entrepreneur who lives in London. He's co-editor of Boing-Boing and former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; he writes science fiction novels, and he gives his work away free of charge - yet makes a living from his writing. How can it be done? That's one of the things he explains here. This is a collection of speeches, essays, and articles he has produced in the last few years, proselytising in favour of open source software, against digital rights management (DRM) systems, against censorship, in favour of the free exchange of information, unhindered by state controls or commercial prohibitions. At their most fervent, his arguments come across like those of a students' union activist - but he's brave. He speaks against Digital Rights Management (DRM) to an audience at Microsoft... Read more >>

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Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights

Anybody involved in a creative project - particularly where a number of people are involved - knows that an early question will always be raised: "Who owns the intellectual property rights?" Or you could be selling widgets, only to find that another company has started doing the same thing. Can you sue them - or are they more likely to sue you? The product can be a manufactured object, it could be a service, or an 'intellectual asset'. It could be designing a company web site, running a training course, writing a product guidance manual, devising a manufacturing process, or putting on a television programme. History is littered with cases of people who assumed that they had the rights to something they had written or produced - only to find the profits from their labours taken by ... Read more >>

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Intellectual Property and Open Source

The Open Source movement makes software available free for people to use or even to pass on to others. This flies in the face of normal commercial practice, where people jealously guard their intellectual property rights. Traditional laws support these rights - so when new open source projects come into being, often as a result of work done collectively, it can be difficult to disentangle issues of ownership and control. Van Lindberg's new book is an amazingly thorough guide to the whole business. He explains the legal niceties without resorting to too much jargon, and supplies practical support materials in the form of sample licences and agreements. The first part of the book has eight chapters giving an introduction to intellectual property law, then the second part is six chapters offering an intellectual property handbook for developers, particularly those working in the field of ... Read more >>