Policy Wars I: Copyright, IP, and Privatizing Knowledge
For today:
- CLASS DISCUSSION LEADERS – John Halbleib and Chris Sichi
- Read – Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Copyright and American Culture. Ideas, Expressions, and Democracy,” Copyrights and Copywrongs, pp. 17-34.
- Suggested reading – Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Hep Cats and Copy Cats. American Music Challenges the Copyright Tradition,” Copyrights and Copywrongs, pp. 117-148.
- Watch – Aaron Swartz on the fight against Internet censorship & SOPA
- In-class – Screening of The Internet’s Own Boy
- KEYWORDS – Copyright, Piracy, Intellectual Property (IP), The Commons
For further reading & research:
- Siva Vaidhyanathan articles and interviews in the media
- Steal This Film (website)
- The legality of re-selling purchased digital music, via Slate.
- Readings from Kembrew McLeod: Freedom of Expression (PDF book); “Happy Birthday, Screw You“; “Consumption and Intellectual Property,” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer (2006).
- Film: Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property
- Zack O’Malley Greenburg, “Why Wu-Tang Will Release Just One Copy Of Its Secret Album,” Forbes, March 26, 2014. You can also watch an accompanying short documentary about the Wu-Tang’s secret album.
- “Iron Maiden are Proving that Piracy Can Save the Music Industry,” Aux TV, Dec 2, 2013.
- Stuart Dredge, “Thom Yorke calls Spotify ‘the last desperate fart of a dying corpse’,” The Guardian, Oct 7, 2013.
- Rick Prelinger, “Beyond Copyright Consciousness,” Bad Subjects #52 (2000).
- Archive.org and a documentary about the Internet Archive
- “They Say That I Stole This” – Audio recording of a 2010 conversation between Girl Talk, Hank Shocklee, and Duke Law Professor, James Boyle. Recorded and broadcasted via National Public Radio’s On the Media show. A transcript of the conversation is here.
- Creative Commons – an alternative form of copyright protection
- Lawrence Lessig on Free Culture (2002)
Material Discussed in class: