copyright

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.

The primary idea of the book, as expressed in the title, is the notion that computer code (or "West Coast Code", referring to Silicon Valley) regulates conduct in much the same way that legal code (or "East Coast Code", referring to Washington, D.C.) does. More generally, Lessig argues that there are actually four major regulators (Law, Norms, Market, Architecture) each of which has a profound impact on society and whose implications must be considered (sometimes called the "pathetic dot theory", after the "dot" that is constrained by these regulators.)

The book includes a discussion of the implications for copyright law, arguing that cyberspace changes not only the technology of copying but also the power of law to protect against illegal copying. It goes so far as to argue that code displaces the balance in copyright law and doctrines such as fair use. If it becomes possible to license every aspect of use (by means of trusted systems created by code), no aspect of use would have the protection of fair use. The importance of this side of the story is generally underestimated and, as the examples in the book show, very often, code is even (only) considered as an extra tool to fight against "unlimited copying."

(Source: Wikipedia entry on Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace)

In Ghana, adinkra and kente textiles derive their significance from their association with both Asante and Ghanaian cultural nationalism. Adinkra, made by stenciling patterns with black dye, and kente, a type of strip weaving, each convey, through color, style, and adornment, the bearer’s identity, social status, and even emotional state. Yet both textiles have been widely mass-produced outside Ghana, particularly in East Asia, without any compensation to the originators of the designs.

In The Copyright Thing Doesn’t Work Here, Boatema Boateng focuses on the appropriation and protection of adinkra and kente cloth in order to examine the broader implications of the use of intellectual property law to preserve folklore and other traditional forms of knowledge. Boateng investigates the compatibility of indigenous practices of authorship and ownership with those established under intellectual property law, considering the ways in which both are responses to the changing social and historical conditions of decolonization and globalization. Comparing textiles to the more secure copyright protection that Ghanaian musicians enjoy under Ghanaian copyright law, she demonstrates that different forms of social, cultural, and legal capital are treated differently under intellectual property law.

Boateng then moves beyond Africa, expanding her analysis to the influence of cultural nationalism among the diaspora, particularly in the United States, on the appropriation of Ghanaian and other African cultures for global markets. Boateng’s rich ethnography brings to the surface difficult challenges to the international regulation of both contemporary and traditional concepts of intellectual property, and questions whether it can even be done.

Copyright is a legal sanction that grants monopoly rights to individual or corporate content producers with regard to the use of their productions. Copyright may include a producer’s right to be identifi fied as the author of her work, her right to control that work’s distribution (commercial or otherwise), and her right to restrict the production of works derivative of the original. Generally, any work fixed fi in a tangible form (e.g., a story that is written down or a song that is recorded) is eligible for copyright protection through the positive action of the producer (who files fi for copyright) or by default (as in the United States, where copyright protection accrues automatically upon the production of such a work). Copyright is one branch of intellectual property law, which also includes patent, trademark, and trade secrets law.

The history of copyright is inextricably tied to the history of the invention and innovation of technologies of cultural production and distribution. The widespread use of the printing press by the sixteenth century led to the regulation of presses (in the sense of the actual technology rather than the sense of “publisher”) for purposes of political censorship and reducing competition among printers. For example, the long title of a 1662 British law was “An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses.” Even earlier, the 1556 Charter of the Stationers’ Company “gave the stationers the power to ‘make ordinances, provisions, and statute’ for the governance of ‘the art or mistery of [s] tationary’ as well as the power to search out illegal presses and books and things with the power of ‘seizing, taking, or burning the foresaid books or things, or any of them printed or to be printed contrary to the form of any statute, act, or proclamation’ ” (Patterson 1993, 9).

(Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved)

An overview of digital media ethics (DME), confronting the challenges evoked by digital media. Including privacy issues, research ethics, copyright concerns, violent content in computer-based games, global citizenship, pornography, journalism ethics, and robot ethics.

Pedro Barbosa recalls in this interview his memories of the first studies and works of electronic literature back in the 1970s when he was a student at the University of Porto. Starting from considerations about his collaborative works he makes a comparison between printed literature tradition and the age of new media focusing on the paradigmatic change of this very transitional period with live in and the differences of the creative work. Furthermore he makes an interesting statement on regard of the aesthetics of new media by comparing works of electronic literature with the oral tradition. In the end he mentions some of the milestones of electronic literature that he considers important.

A video interview about the installation "How It Is in Common Tongues" at the Remediating the Social exhibition with John Cayley and Daniel Howe. Interview conducted by Scott Rettberg 3 Nov. 2012 at Inspace, Edinburgh. Photography by Richard Ashrowan.

The social appropriation of digital technologies for music creation, recording and distribution has generated, among other factors, an intense reorganization of the long established patterns of consumption, requiring an overhaul of the business models of the phonographic industry, and a strengthening of the so-called indie music scene. In this reconfiguration of the music production chain, new players enter the scene – such as mobile phone carriers – and the long-standing oligopoly of the four major players (Sony-BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI) are under considerable threat. The polemical issue of cyberpiracy needs to be examined in the light of the new consumer practices in play within cyberculture. This paper analyzes the results of a field study conducted with college students from the two major megalopolises in Latin America: São Paulo and Mexico City. The research was coordinated by the author, in partnership with Dr. Octavio Islas, Chair of the Cyberculture Department at the Monterrey Institute of Technology. Our comparative study focused on the new consumer practices of Brazilian and Mexican college students on the Internet. Their views on common practices in cyberculture, such as file sharing and remixing, are considered here. Methodological issues that permeated this research are also discussed.