Deconstructing the Discourse of Self-Corrective Intellectual Property Markets

Abstract

This essay claims that intellectual property markets are not self-corrective. The discourse of self-corrective intellectual property markets is based upon a belief regarding the tendency of the market to automatically eliminate harmful consequences resulting from piracy, fraud, corruption, and conflict of interest among agents buying and selling music, movies, and journal articles. Following the critical-logics approach of discourse theory, this essay argues that intellectual property markets function according to certain logics: their social logics are grounded in the normalization of knowledge production and exchange, and their political logics deploy judicial mechanisms and sanctions against dislocatory moments such as copyright infringement. Meanwhile, their fantasmatic logics conceal the radical contingency of the given intellectual property regime, fueled by the academic desire for recognition via publishing in journals operated by for-profit companies. In exposing the logics of intellectual property markets, the essay suggests a counterhegemonic position supporting the ethics of open access and peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing.