Kembrew McLeod: Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, commons, copyright, intellectual property, liberty
Freedom of Expression® covers the ways in which intellectual property laws have been used to privatize all forms of expression—from guitar riffs and Donald Trump’s “you’re fired” gesture to human genes and public space—and in the process stifle creative expression. Kembrew McLeod challenges the blind embrace of privatization as it clashes against our right to free speech and shared resources.
This book’s documentary companion will be available through Media Education Foundation.
Table of Contents
Foreword: An Ideal Lawyer-Citizen (by Lawrence Lessig)
Introduction
1. This Gene Is Your Gene: Fencing Off the Folk and Genetic Commons
2. Copyright Criminals: This Is a Sampling Sport
3. Illegal Art: When Art Gets in Trouble with the Law, Art Gives the Law Trouble Back
4. Culture, Inc.: Our Hyper-Referential, Branded Culture
5. Our Privatized World: Selling Off the Public Square, Culture, Education, Our Democracy, and Everything Else
6. The Digital Future: And the Analog Past
Afterword: Freedom of Expression®
Epilogue: The Day I Killed Freedom of Expression
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2007
ISBN 0816650314, 9780816650316
Length 379 pages
The PDF Version of the book is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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James Boyle: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, copyright, filesharing, intellectual property, public domain
In this enlightening book, James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age – today’s heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today’s policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation. Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain – the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson’s philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the ‘commons of the mind’, Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.
Publisher Yale University Press, 2008
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
ISBN 0300137400, 9780300137408
Length 315 pages
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Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (2004–) [EN, ES, IT, HU, PL, CAT, ZH, DE, RU, PT, FR, CZ, KZ, NO]
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, creative commons, free culture, intellectual property, law
“Lawrence Lessig argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.”
Publisher Penguin, 2004
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0 License
ISBN 1594200068, 9781594200069
345 pages
Free Culture (English, 2004)
Cultura libre (Spanish, 2004)
Cultura libera (Italian, 2005)
Szabad kultura (Hungarian, 2005)
Wolna kultura (Polish, 2005)
Cultura lliure (Catalan, 2005)
自由文化 (Chinese, 2006)
Freie Kultur (German, 2006)
Свободная Культура (Russian, 2007)
Cultura livre (Portuguese, 2007)
Culture libre (French, 2009)
Svobodná kultura (Czech, 2010)
Еркін мәдениет (Kazakh, 2012)
Fri kultur (Norwegian, 2015, other formats)