Intellectual Property

Can Technology Save Intellectual Property Without Crippling Our Culture?

adminn — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:16:00 -0400

The easy knock on Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture is that it seems dated. In walking the reader through the many issues and arguments of digital copyright, Gillespie focuses on three seminal attempts at Digital Rights Management -- the Recording Industry Association of America's failed Secure Digital Music Initiative, moviemakers' somewhat more successful efforts to lock down DVDs, and the major television networks' push to require "broadcast flags" on digital television signals. All three battles, while important, were waged years ago; more recent, equally relevant examples are touched on briefly or not at… more

The Music Industry's Extortion Scheme

Ron Tang — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:40:00 -0400

What would you do if a bully -- let's call him "Joey Giggles" -- kept snatching your ice-cream cone? OK, now what if Joey Giggles then told you, "If you pay me five bucks a month, I'll stop snatching your ice cream." Depending on how much you hate getting beaten up, and how much you love ice-cream cones, you might decide that caving in is the way to go. This is what's called a protection racket. It's also potentially the new model for how we'll buy and listen to music.

Let's back up for a second. Four companies (Universal Music Group,… more

Hollywood's Big Online Rival: the Little Guy

Articles — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:12:00 -0400

The latest brouhaha over alleged copyright infringement on the Internet has pitted some of the biggest names in corporate America against each other: Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone versus Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

But you’d be wise to keep your eyes on two other guys who, in a small way, are helping to transform the media landscape: Christopher Allan Smith and Ryan Neisz.

They’re the creators and co-stars of an online comedy series called Snowmen Hunters, which was nominated this week by Google’s YouTube Web site for one of its inaugural video awards, which seek to honor user-generated content.

It’s… more

Jennifer Washburn

Operations — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:37:00 -0400

Fellow

Jennifer Washburn is the author of University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005), which has received critical acclaim both inside and outside academia. Her book explores the commercial transformation of American higher education over the last 30 years, and the effect this is having on research, quality education, disinterested inquiry, innovation, and the free flow of public knowledge. Ms. Washburn's journalism articles and opinion pieces have appeared in a range of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Washington Times, Mother Jones, and the Journal of Commerce. In 2001, Ms. Washburn was the recipient of the prestigious National Association of… more

The Legal Lock on Stem Cells

Articles — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

California's $3-billion stem cell program has encountered repeated setbacks since it was approved by voters 17 months ago. Now it faces an entirely new and potentially even more worrisome challenge arising from two powerful patents -- patents No. 5,843,780 and No. 6,200,806, to be exact -- which cover all human embryonic stem cells and the method by which they're made.

Patents are supposed to stimulate innovation. That's why they exist. But it appears that these two patents, held by a foundation affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, may exert a dangerous monopoly over all future research in the… more

Hollywood and Whine

Articles — Sat, 01 Feb 2003 04:00:00 -0500

It's a political tale as old as Capitol Hill: A lumbering industry selects a certain corporate-friendly party to be its Beltway patsy. In exchange for the requisite campaign donations and other perks, members of said party use their clout to push through the industry's legislative agenda--an agenda that would rip off consumers and harm the overall economy but enrich the corporate string-pullers immensely. Pundits and public-interest types grumble over the bald-faced cronyism, but as long as the money keeps flowing, the beneficiaries don't seem to care a whit.

Sounds like the buddy-buddy relationship between Republicans and the… more

Why We Must Talk About the Information Commons

Wireless Future — Thu, 01 Nov 2001 04:00:00 -0500

If Stevenson was correct in his reinterpretation of Goethe—“That which you inherit from your fathers/You must earn in order to possess”—then the efflorescence of digital technologies over the past twenty years is posing some unprecedented challenges to our democratic polity. The computer, the Internet and any other digital technologies are dramatically changing the character oforganizations, markets, the nation-state and the global economy. What is less clear is how the traditional rights and liberties of American citizens shall be re-interpreted inthe new digital landscape and find new soil in which to flourish—or wither.

Will individual citizens have the same freedoms in the… more

Will the 1's and 0's Run Free?

Communications — Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
02/21/2001 - 12:00pm

When former antagonists Napster and Bertelsmann made friends a few months back, many assumed that the war between copyright and technology was over; that a workable scheme for protecting Intellectual Property in new media was on the horizon. Not so, argues Brendan Koerner: efforts to control IP in the Information Age are doomed to fail, thanks in no small part to the policy preferences of the American public and its leaders for open access and a competitive market in new media.

According to Koerner, when it comes to information architecture, complexity works at cross-purposes to control: the more parties with a piece of the pipe, the more holes for enterprising hackers and software tools to exploit. As long as Americans object to monopoly control of new media, Koerner argues, the information flow cannot be controlled, and effective information and communications policymaking must begin with an acceptance of that proposition.

The New Politics

Articles — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Several years ago I was driving cross-country from Washington to Berkeley. My D.C. license plates inevitably sparked interesting political discussions along the way, especially in the Rocky Mountains, where I encountered many people with … more

The Kept University

Articles — Wed, 01 Mar 2000 12:00:00 -0500

In the fall of 1964 a twenty-one-year-old Berkeley undergraduate named Mario Savio climbed the steps of Sproul Hall and denounced his university for bending over backwards to "serve the need of American industry." Savio, the leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, accused the university of functioning as "a factory that turns out a certain product needed by industry" rather than serving as the conscience and a critic of society. To the modern ear this sixties rhetoric may sound outdated. To many people in the academic world, however, Savio's words ring truer today than ever. Although our national conversation about… more