Amen to That


 
 
 
 Proponents of the free culture movement argue that contemporary, “over-zealous” copyright laws have an adverse affect on the freedoms of consumers and creators to make use of copyrighted materials. Lessig, McLeod, Vaidhyanathan, Demers, and Coombe, to name but a few, detail instances where creativity and consumer use have been hindered by copyright laws. The “intellectual land-grab” (Boyle, “Politics” 94), instigated by the increasing value of intangibles in the information age, has forced copyright owners to seek maximal protection for copyrighted materials. A propertarian approach seeks to imbue copyrighted materials with the same inalienable rights as real property, yet copyright is not a property right, because “the copyright owner … holds no ordinary chattel” (Dowling v. United States 473 US 207, 216 [1985]). A fundamental difference resides in the exclusivity of use: “If you eat my apple, then I cannot” but “if you “take” my idea, I still have it. If I tell you an idea, you have not deprived me of it. An unavoidable feature of intellectual property is that its consumption is non-rivalrous” (Lessig, Code 131). It is, as James Boyle notes, “different” to real property (Shamans 174). Vaidhyanathan observes, “copyright in the American tradition was not meant to be a “property right” as the public generally understands property. It was originally a narrow federal policy that granted a limited trade monopoly in exchange for universal use and access” (11). This paper explores the ways in which “property talk” has infiltrated copyright discourse and endangered the utility of the law in fostering free and diverse forms of creative expression. The possessiveness and exclusion that accompany “property talk” are difficult to reconcile with the utilitarian foundations of copyright. Transformative uses of copyrighted materials such as mashing, sampling and appropriative art are incompatible with a propertarian approach, subjecting freedom of creativity to arbitary licensing fees that often extend beyond the budget of creators (Collins). “Property talk” risks making transformative works an elitist form of creativity, available only to those with the financial resources necessary to meet the demands for licences. 
 
 There is a wealth of decisions throughout American and English case law that sustain Vaidhyanathan’s argument (see for example, Donaldson v. Becket 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953; Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]; Fox Film Corporation v. Doyal 286 US 123 [1932]; US v. Paramount Pictures 334 US 131 [1948]; Mazer v. Stein 347 US 201, 219 [1954]; Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aitken 422 U.S. 151 [1975]; Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co. 440 US 257 [1979]; Dowling v. United States 473 US 207 [1985]; Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 [1985]; Luther R. Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker, et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 510 U.S 569 [1994].). As Lemley states, however, “Congress, the courts and commentators increasingly treat intellectual property as simply a species of real property rather than as a unique form of legal protection designed to deal with public goods problems” (1-2). Although section 106 of the Copyright Act 1976 grants exclusive rights, sections 107 to 112 provide freedoms beyond the control of the copyright owner, undermining the exclusivity of s.106. Australian law similarly grants exceptions to the exclusive rights granted in section 31. Exclusivity was a principal objective of the eighteenth century Stationers’ argument for a literary property right. Sir William Blackstone, largely responsible for many Anglo-American concepts concerning the construction of property law, defined property in absolutist terms as “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the whole universe” (2). On the topic of reprints he staunchly argued an author “has clearly a right to dispose of that identical work as he pleases, and any attempt to take it from him, or vary the disposition he has made of it, is an invasion of his right of property” (405-6). Blackstonian copyright advanced an exclusive and perpetual property right. Blackstone’s interpretation of Lockean property theory argued for a copyright that extended beyond the author’s expression and encompassed the very “style” and “sentiments” held therein. (Tonson v. Collins [1760] 96 ER 189.) According to Locke, 
 
 every Man has a Property in his own Person . . . The Labour of his Body and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. (287-8)
 
 
 
 Blackstone’s inventive interpretation of Locke “analogised ideas, thoughts, and opinions with tangible objects to which title may be taken by occupancy under English common law” (Travis 783). Locke’s labour theory, however, is not easily applied to intangibles because occupancy or use is non-rivalrous. The appropriate extent of an author’s proprietary right in a work led Locke himself to a philosophical impasse (Bowrey 324). Although Blackstonian copyright was suppressed by the House of Lords in the eighteenth century (Donaldson v. Becket [1774] 17 Cobbett Parliamentary History, col. 953) and by the Supreme Court sixty years later (Wheaton v. Peters 33 US 591 [1834]), it has never wholly vacated copyright discourse. “Property talk” is undesirable in copyright discourse because it implicates totalitarian notions such as exclusion and inalienable private rights of ownership with no room for freedom of creativity or to use copyrighted materials for non-piracy related purposes.
 
 The notion that intellectual property is a species of property akin with real property is circulated by media companies seeking greater control over copyrighted materials, but the extent to which “property talk” has been adopted by the courts and scholars is troubling. Lemley (3-5) and Bell speculate whether the term “intellectual property” carries any responsibility for the propertisation of intangibles. A survey of federal court decisions between 1943 and 2003 reveals an exponential increase in the usage of the term. As noted by Samuelson (398) and Cohen (379), within the spheres of industry, culture, law, and politics the word “property” implies a broader scope of rights than those associated with a grant of limited monopoly. 
 
 Music United claims “unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD”. James Brown argues sampling from his records is tantamount to theft: “Anything they take off my record is mine . . . Can I take a button off your shirt and put it on mine? Can I take a toenail off your foot – is that all right with you?” (Miller 1). Equating unauthorised copying with theft seeks to socially demonise activities occurring outside of the permission culture currently being fostered by inventive interpretations of the law. Increasing propagation of copyright as the personal property of the creator and/or copyright owner is instrumental in efforts to secure further legislative or judicial protection:
 
 Since 1909, courts and corporations have exploited public concern for rewarding established authors by steadily limiting the rights of readers, consumers, and emerging artists. All along, the author was deployed as a straw man in the debate. The unrewarded authorial genius was used as a rhetorical distraction that appealed to the American romantic individualism. (Vaidhyanathan 11)
 
 
 The “unrewarded authorial genius” was certainly tactically deployed in the eighteenth century in order to generate sympathy in pleas for further protection (Feather 71). Supporting the RIAA, artists including Britney Spears ask “Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It’s the same thing – people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music”. The presence of a notable celebrity claiming file-sharing is equivalent to stealing their personal property is a more publicly acceptable spin on the major labels’ attempts to maintain a monopoly over music distribution. 
 
 In 1997, Congress enacted the No Electronic Theft Act which extended copyright protection into the digital realm and introduced stricter penalties for electronic reproduction. The use of “theft” in the title clearly aligns the statute with a propertarian portrayal of intangibles. Most movie fans will have witnessed anti-piracy propaganda in the cinema and on DVDs. Analogies between stealing a bag and downloading movies blur fundamental distinctions in the rivalrous/non-rivalrous nature of tangibles and intangibles (Lessig Code, 131). Of critical significance is the infiltration of “property talk” into the courtrooms. In 1990 Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote:
 
 Patents give a right to exclude, just as the law of trespass does with real property … Old rhetoric about intellectual property equating to monopoly seemed to have vanished, replaced by a recognition that a right to exclude in intellectual property is no different in principle from the right to exclude in physical property … Except in the rarest case, we should treat intellectual and physical property identically in the law – which is where the broader currents are taking us. (109, 112, 118)
 
 
 Although Easterbrook refers to patents, his endorsement of “property talk” is cause for concern given the similarity with which patents and copyrights have been historically treated (Ou 41). In Grand Upright v. Warner Bros. Judge Kevin Duffy commenced his judgment with the admonishment “Thou shalt not steal”. Similarly, in Ja

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky” and They’re Copyrighted: How Copyright Is Used to Dampen the (Re-)Imagination

Kimbrew McLeod and Rudolph Kuenzli, eds. · Cutting across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 201 I. 361 pp.Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 190 pp.Trying to explain what Gregg Gillis, who performs under the stage name Girl Talk, does to someone who grew up in the eras of Doors or Ramones can be a bit challenging. Technically, Gillis is a mash-up artist - someone who combines two or more samples of music to create new musical experience.As an example, one of the most famous mash-ups is DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a combination of the vocals from rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and samples from the 1968 album, The Beatles (better known as The White Album). But despite the artistic success of straightforward mash-ups by artists such as Danger Mouse, nothing compares to the sonic collages created by Girl Talk. Gillis, who has a degree in biomedical engineering, quit his day job several years ago to create his remixes. His most recent album, All Day, reportedly contains at least four hundred samples - typically snippets of rap combined with samples of pop, rock, or soul music from the past forty or fifty years, including Doors and the Ramones.Both Danger Mouse and Girl Talk have given away their albums online, and none of the samples have been licensed or paid for use. Capitol/EMI, the publisher, sent out a cease-and-desist letter telling Danger Mouse and the websites hosting his work to take down the album because it infringed on the Beatles' copyright. But when the album remained online, nothing happened to those distributing the content. And so far, no one has sued Girl Talk's Gillis for his massive sampling.It is the world of such collagists working in the legal netherworld between fair use and flat-out infringement that occupies the attention of Cutting across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law. book is an eclectic anthology of essays, oral histories, interviews, and collages. introduction by editors McLeod and Kuenzli sets the stage with the Igor Stravinsky quote, A good composer does not imitate, he steals (p. 1 ). Instead of focusing on the need for and procedures for fair use or the need for the public domain, McLeod and Kuezli look instead at the collage/remix culture that creates new works out of old: The chapters included here implicitly or explicitly treat collage as a cultural practice that can intervene within mass media, consumer culture, copyright regimes, and everyday life (p. 2).A key point in both the opening essay and in the collection itself is that collage/ remix/assemblage is not unique to the digital era. Among the examples is a brief essay by Lloyd Dunn from the sound assemblage group Tape-beatles about his work on PhotoStatic magazine and the concept of casual publishing. Photocopiers made it easy for artists to not only combine source materials in new ways but also to distribute the new work on a small-scale and inexpensive way. Following his essay is a series of pages from a 1988 edition of PhotoStatic on the Tape-beatles and an interview with Dunn and his colleague John Heck about the legal and creative issues that emerged from their work on sound and visual collages. Another is a photo essay by culture jammer Craig Baldwin portraying billboard alterations and improvements from the 1980s and 1990s in the San Francisco area that include turning cigarette billboards into antiwar, antimilitary statements.The digital age gets its own attention with essays from Davis Schneiderman (on DJ Danger Mouse and others) and from Illegal Arts founder Philo T. (the publisher for Girl Talk). Farnsworth argues that while what Girl Talk does is legal under fair use, he would be interested in opening up a wider discussion with the music industry:Our interests have never been to completely dismantle copyright law, but we operate on the fringes due to the extreme reactions by the entertainment industry to sampling. …

On Gregg Gillis’ laptop computer are thousands of files representing a vast slice of 20th and 21st century popular music.1 His digital music collection is similar to that of many music consumers: it spans a wide variety of genres and runs from the obscure to the mainstream. But Gillis is different from most music consumers in that he uses computer software to cut his digital music files into audio snippets, or samples, and then piece them together into song collages.2 Gregg Gillis is Girl Talk, a recording artist on the Illegal Art label whose music has made yearend best music lists in Time Magazine,3 Rolling Stone,4 Blender5 and Pitchforkmedia.com.6 Girl Talk has developed a strong following throughout the United States and has toured throughout Europe and Australia.7 A PC user, he was recently featured in one of the “I’m a PC” ads for Microsoft.8 But while Girl Talk has been successful, Gillis adds almost no original musical content to his recordings. Although he often alters the speed or pitch of his samples, or loops them in a continuous pattern, he does not sing or rap over his creations. Furthermore, Gillis has never sought licenses or authorization for any of the samples he uses.9 For instance, his latest album, “Feed the Animals,” includes over 300 unauthorized samples10 of artists ranging from Lil Wayne to Radiohead to Metallica to Kenny Loggins.

Intellectual property is the personal property resulting from the creative or inventive work of individual or individuals. It is all about human creativities and a product of human mind. Intellectual property like other types of property is protected by several laws and regulations to offer protection against illegal ownership and user ship. Such set of rights is IPR. Presently, TRIPs has indentified the IPRs internationally. These include patents, copyrights, trademarks, and geographical indications, protection of undisclosed information, layout design of integrated circuits and industrial design. Although international intervention by TRIPs, there is many burning issues still need to be focused aggressively. These areas include protection of traditional knowledge, protection of products from natural resources and protection of people’s right (tribals/farmers/breeders). The Indian pharmaceuticals industries at high pace of development and expansion are research/knowledge based industries which largely rely on human mind creativity and innovation. The industry uses the intellectual potential of their research scientist and inventors investing huge economic resources. The economic progress and market sustainability depends on their thought based new products and processes. Under such situation, the protection of such wide area of intellectual property and their financial interest is of paramount importance for future of industry and human welfare in health care sector. Research-based, innovation-led companies that seek to develop new drugs, improve or adapt existing drugs or develop new pharmaceutical/medical equipment or processes, tend to rely heavily on the IPR/patent system to ensure they recover the investments incurred in research and development. IPR laws and acts had passed through many changes in response to TRIPs. The major provisions affecting IPR are shifting from process patent to product patent, extending patent term for 20 years and many others.

As we learn more about how the brain functions, the study of the brain changes what we know about human creativity and innovation and our ability to enhance the brain with technology. The possibilities of direct brain-to-brain communication, the use of cognitive enhancing drugs to enhance human intelligence and creativity, and the extended connections between brains and the larger technological world, all suggest areas of linkage between intellectual property (IP) law and policy and the study of the brain science. Questions of importance include: Who owns creativity in such a world when humans are enhanced with technology? And how does one define an original work of authorship or invention if either were created with the aid of an enhancement technology? This paper suggests that new conceptualizations of the brain undermine the notion of the autonomous individual and may serve to locate creativity and originality beyond that of individual creation. In this scenario, the legal fiction of individual ownership of a creative work will be displaced, and as this paper warns, under current conditions the IP policies which may take its place will be of concern absent a rethinking of human agency in the neuropolitical age.

This chapter seeks to distinguish between intellectual property rights the existing legal mechanisms for intellectual property protection – and the right to intellectual property. The right to intellectual property is a human right. Intellectual property rights, instrumental in nature and codified in legal frameworks around the world, are not. Rather, intellectual property rights as they exist are both over- and under-inclusive in their protection of the right to intellectual property. However, the right to intellectual property exists for everyone, and a human rights perspective on IP should change the framework by which we evaluate and construct the legal system, expose the flaws of a system designed to primarily protect corporate interests, and present possibilities for a more inclusive approach.The analysis begins in Part l with a discussion of the human right to the moral and material interests of creators, as that right has been embodied in an international human rights framework over time. In Part 2, I discuss intellectual property rights - their importance and relevance to the human rights detailed in Article l5(1)(c) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Creations of the mind are not only fundamental to personhood and community, but they serve as a primary economic vehicle on the global stage and have the potential to facilitate the ability of creators to access an adequate standard of living in remote areas and disadvantaged communities. In Part 3, I discuss General Comment 17 of the CESCR, which gives guidance and effect to the human rights provisions found in Article 15(1)(c). I conclude that for the rights in Article 15(l)(c) to be realized, they must be perceived as a fundamental aspect of intellectual property law and policy. Protection and respect for the moral and material interests of creators, the right to intellectual property, is a human right; and as such, human rights discourse must inform intellectual property policy. This conclusion has implications both for the intellectual property law community and the human rights community: to forget that human creators are at the centre of scientific and artistic innovation works to the detriment of effective IP policy; to avoid the legal mechanism by which the rights of creators are protected works to the detriment of human rights.

There is no consensus on the role that culture plays in the processes of globalisation for the very simple reason that culture is a difficult and elusive term to define,1 and is subject to global p...

The creativity of human resources at Micro, Medium and Small Enterprise (MSME) had an essential part for the development of MSME in recent Covid-19 pandemic situation. The matter of creativity was significantly required through an intellectual property rights (IPR) license agreement support; furthermore, resulted the optimization of economic as its exclusive right equitably protected. Regardless the license agreement owned by West Java MSMEs was inadequately appropriate. This study purposed to find out how the human resources creativity of West Java MSME and human resources creativity through intellectual property rights license agreement in in the Covid-19 situation. This study applied a cross sectional method, qualitative normative juridical and legal interpretation methods. The descriptive research specification was quantitative analysis, implementing purposive sampling technique to obtain thirty MSME respondents specifically in West Java. In addition, the data collection engaged literature study techniques. The results showed that the creativity of human resource at MSME might increase the demand for MSME products. The human resources creativity including person, process, press and product perspectives were fundamental in the development of MSME. It referred to an indication by the frequency of respondents in carrying out each perspective assessed as a necessity in developing MSME. Thus, intellectual property rights license agreement led to be required aspect in improving, protecting and developing the creativity of human resources, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic situation. It was proven by being understood and trusted by West Java MSME; nevertheless, the participation at the time of socialization was not optimal. In the other hand, West Java MSME had been propertied by the intellectual property rights license agreement. It related to procedural constraints, lack of information and also costs.

Islam recognizes the notion of personal rights of the individuals including the right of ownership, possession and property. Islam also identifies the individual’s rights to function individualistically. Therefore the efforts made for promoting intellectual rights can be considered a legitimate and recognized personal right. The notion of intellectual property is not unfamiliar to the Islamic regulation of property but it is an essential portion of it. Wide-ranging doctrines derived from the foundations of Islamic law and defined by Muslim jurists have directly protected it as a legal property. Intellectual property rights are indispensable to human creativity. Many laws have been enacted to protect intellectual property rights by creating awareness among the individuals about the intellectual property rights at national and international level. This research presents various viewpoints of Islamic scholars on intellectual property rights by highlighting the extent of these intellectual property rights. It also explores the endeavors being made at national and international level to raise awareness about various intellectual property rights including trademark, copyright and patent, which facilitate innovators to acquire acknowledgment or monetary advantages from their innovations. The basic aim of this research is to portrait a general idea of the endeavors made by numerous international organizations, countries and bodies including World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Paris Convention, Protection Industrial Property, Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and World Trade Organization (WTO) for protecting the intellectual property rights. This study also explores the efforts made by Pakistan to enact laws for intellectual property rights by issuing various ordinances including Patents Ordinance 2000, Trade Marks Ordinance, 2001, Copyright Ordinance 1962. The Intellectual Property Organization-IPO was also as an autonomous body in 2005 under the administrative control of the Cabinet Division for integrated and efficient intellectual property management in Pakistan. Results, recommendations are presented at the end.

Silent Objects and Persistent Ruins:Curating and surviving imperial debris Amy Woodson-Boulton A Place That Matters Yet: John Gubbins's MuseumAfrica in the postcolonial world By Sara G. Byala. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters with material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands By Claire Wintle. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. The Empire Inside: Indian commodities in Victorian domestic novels By Suzanne Daly. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Treasured Possessions: Indigenous interventions into cultural and intellectual property By Haidy Geismar. Objects/Histories: Critical Perspectives on Art, Material Culture, and Representation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Imperial Debris: On ruins and ruination Edited by Ann Laura Stoler. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2013. These five works, from varying disciplines and written at various stages of academic careers, all consider the cultural work of objects and places, particularly those whose histories are deeply entangled with colonial relationships. In doing so, they work across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and try to interpret the meaning and legacies of locations, collections and commodities, both real and imagined, in a post-colonial world. The fact that these studies are both interdisciplinary and post-colonial is crucial, and not coincidental: written by scholars from History, English, Anthropology and Art History, these works have to grapple with the fact that the museums, novels, intellectual property and copyright laws, and cultural categories they study are imperial artifacts, as are the very disciplines they employ to examine them. The works therefore find various ways to frame and define their objects of study. Three of these works explore discrete collections of specific objects: Sara Byala traces the history of a idealistic, "antiracist" museum of Africana, from its founding in 1935 to the present, which collected "the cultural remnants of any and all people of southern Africa" (4); Claire Wintle writes the "biographies" of objects from their original Andaman and Nicobar contexts, to their incorporation into private collections, to their inclusion in the Brighton Museum; and Suzanne Daly looks at the treatment and histories of four different commodities (Kashmir shawls, cotton, diamonds and tea) in Victorian novels. Haidy Gaismar takes a broader, comparative view, looking at how Māori and ni-Vanuatu cultural movements are bringing Indigenous and customary ideas about tangible and intellectual property into national and international legal frameworks, and tracing how specific institutions and objects can embody an alternative to dominant Western definitions, serving to "indigenize" and "provincialize" Europe. Finally, the collection edited by Ann Laura Stoler uses a series of case studies of post-colonial contexts to find "imperial ruins," using the frame of decay and debris to thickly describe the persistence of colonial relations, the roles of neoliberalism and globalization in perpetuating such relations, and the accommodations and survival strategies of those maneuvering in the margins. Through their different approaches, however, these studies all call our attention to the circulation of objects: the many hands and minds they touch; the social, geographical and cultural boundaries they cross; their continual redefinition and re-appropriation; their magical properties of carrying multiple layers of meaning; the Victorian development of institutions and cultural forms to house and represent them (such as museums, paintings and novels); and their stubborn silence outside of careful, detailed and thorough historical research and cultural analysis. In addressing the silence of objects, of the archival record and of the ruins left to us, these studies also highlight their authors' own acts of translation: across time, across cultures, across disciplinary boundaries, across divisions of gender, race and class, and between and among cultural forms. These works thus also raise issues about how difficult it is to think historically—that is, to meaningfully trace and explain change over time—and in culturally sophisticated ways about the aesthetic domain and material culture. The three books that look at specific collections and commodities offer a wealth of original research, and show us how objects moving into collections become part of larger acts of translation into specific systems of interpretation and disciplinary narratives. Sara Byala's A Place That Matters Yet introduces readers to the little-known MuseumAfrica and the liberal (if limited) possibilities it imagined for ethnic and racial integration in pre...

The present work, “Intellectual Property: Historical Context, importance and its forms of protection” is a chapter of the Course Conclusion research, entitled: “Intellectual Property and the different forms of protection: perspectives of legal support and performance”, has for the purpose of studying the Intellectual Property Institute, its protection system, its influence in the different fields of law and its relationship with Intellectual Property and in particular: To collect and record data that present the different conceptions about Intellectual Property and the different forms of protection. Also, its contribution to society, its relevant social function, the incentive to research, innovation and creation, with industry, the economy, the university and human creation as bridges to consolidate the Institute. In relation to the research proposal, the object of study is the “Intellectual Property Institute”, with the objective of Investigating which important contributions Intellectual Property can provide, both for society and for the scientific, social, economic field, professionally and legally as it is supported, through research in different sources and updated. Thus, having the following problem: What important contributions can Intellectual Property provide, both for society, and for the scientific and operational field? The research methodology is based on bibliographic research and the method used is the narrative literary review, which is a qualitative and descriptive research. It was possible to notice a great doctrinal and jurisprudential clash regarding the researched object and the system of its protection. However, it was also possible to detect the relevant importance of this institute for advancement: social, economic, cultural and if it is possible to manifest it, the perception of a study and hybrid knowledge that permeates several fields of activity and domain, in addition to Law.

It has been over 12 years since the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), a disputed law that has given copyright holders an extra 20 years of legal protection for their works. The law withstood a constitutional challenge and now individual authors enjoy protection for 70 years after their death while rights of corporate authors endure for 95 years. This piece of legislation is an egregious example of the ability of powerful content providers to capture policy makers, since it is hard to argue that this extension promotes justice or serves the public interest by stimulating creativity. No author is apt to be incentivized by an extra 20 years of protection after his or her death. Nor does it seem a matter of social justice to have rights with this sort of longevity, especially when the legitimate needs of future creators are taken into account. The balance between individual rights and the common good must be carefully calibrated and this law creates a critical imbalance that will be difficult to remedy. The CTEA has been demonized by many legal scholars and certainly deserves repudiation. Along with several parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) it has contributed to the copyright thicket that complicates an author’s efforts to use older copyrighted sources in a way that goes beyond the parameters of fair use. The CTEA and DMCA have become a rallying cry for opponents of intellectual property rights who come in many different stripes. An array of books by familiar names such as Lessig (Free Culture) and Boyle (Public Domain) has recently been published attacking the whole intellectual property regime and calling for systematic reform. More radical works by authors like Drahos (Information Feudalism) often seek to undermine the philosophical foundation of copyright and patent law. What most of these books share in common is advocacy for minimal protections that will provide more access to cultural goods without completely negating authorial entitlement. Rarely does one come upon a book that dares to defend exclusive intellectual property (IP) rights, as a growing number of scholars and jurists join the anticopyright bandwagon. One of the more pungent critiques to appear in recent years is Against Intellectual Monopoly. This book was written by two economists, Michele Boldrin and David Levine, who warn their readers at the outset they are two theorists ‘‘bearing radical ideas’’ (p. 15). The authors’ erudition and wit is on display throughout this well-written book as they attempt to refute the conventional justification for intellectual property rights. Along the way, Boldrin and Levine sort out the deficiencies in recent IP policy. Their basic contention is that intellectual property rights do not adequately resolve the market failure of the underproduction of public goods (i.e., goods that are non-excludable and can be easily copied) because they do not optimize social welfare. These rights lead to excessive monopoly rents and distributional inequities that should not be tolerated in a just society. Despite much sound economic analysis, the book is a strident polemic against the doctrine of property rights as evidenced by their choice of a title. The authors prefer the term ‘‘intellectual monopoly’’ to ‘‘intellectual property,’’ since patents and copyrights give creators a monopoly over an idea. All monopolies create social costs but some monopolies generate benefits that outweigh those costs. In R. A. Spinello (&) Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA e-mail: spinello@bc.edu

In Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, Lawrence Lessig warns that the health of the "environment of creativity" has been endangered by the combination of changes in intellectual property law, increased concentration of media ownership and transformations in technology. Lessig maintains that what we face is akin to an environmental crisis, with the crucial difference being that cultural rather than physical resources are under siege. Curiously, though, the world depicted in Free Culture is at odds with Lessig's dystopian vision, for it is a vibrant place where technological innovation, creative endeavors, and public discussion of political issues flourish. To be sure, real problems exist, and addressing them will require a number of difficult determinations, including whether the hazards posed by new technologies outweigh their benefits and how best to ensure that property rights evolve to promote the public interest. Regrettably, however, Free Culture promises to be of little help in crafting useful solutions to these problems. In writing Free Culture, Lessig has set himself a high hurdle, namely to convince his readership that the saga of intellectual property in recent decades represents nothing less than a modern-day Miltonian epic: Paradise was lost when a property rights Eden was infested by the serpent of venal corporate interests, but might be regained through adherence to the reform program outlined in Free Culture. Lessig fails to clear this hurdle for the simple reason that, taken together, the stories he offers in support of his thesis tell a richer, more complicated, and ultimately more interesting tale than the one he has in mind.

Recovering Fair Use