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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Peter Linebaugh: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, history, law, liberty
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny–and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture–are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
Publisher University of California Press, 2008
ISBN 0520247264, 9780520247260
352 pages
Keywords and phrases
Magna Carta, E. P. Thompson, estovers, Granville Sharp, U.S. Supreme Court, Runnymede, habeas corpus, Silvia Federici, King John, England, Charters of Liberties, Mowgli, Richard Mabey, pannage, John Warr, C. L. R. James, Italian American, Edward Coke, common lands, William Morris
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