Copyright's Paradox | 
| Author: Neil Weinstock Netanel
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 173982
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0195137620
Dewey Decimal Number: 346.730482
EAN: 9780195137620
ASIN: 0195137620
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
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Product Description
The United States Supreme Court famously labeled copyright "the engine of free expression" because it provides a vital economic incentive for much of the literature, commentary, music, art, and film that makes up our public discourse. Yet today's copyright law also does the opposite--it is often used to quash news reporting, political commentary, church dissent, historical scholarship, cultural critique, and artistic expression.
In Copyright's Paradox, Neil Weinstock Netanel explores the tensions between copyright law and free speech, revealing how copyright can impose unacceptable burdens on expression. Netanel provides concrete illustrations of how copyright often prevents speakers from effectively conveying their message, tracing this conflict across both traditional and digital media and considering current controversies such as the remix and copying culture rampant on YouTube and MySpace, hip-hop music and digital sampling, and the Google Book Search litigation. The author juxtaposes the dramatic expansion of copyright holders' proprietary control against the individual's newly found ability to digitally cut, paste, edit, remix, and distribute sound recordings, movies, TV programs, graphics, and texts the world over. He tests whether, in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves as a vital engine of free expression and he assesses how copyright does--and does not--burden speech. Taking First Amendment values as his lodestar, Netanel argues that copyright should be limited to how it can best promote robust debate and expressive diversity, and he presents a blueprint for how that can be accomplished.
Copyright and free speech will always stand in some tension. But there are ways in which copyright can continue to serve as an engine of free expression while leaving ample room for speakers to build on copyrighted works to convey their message, express their personal commitments, and create new art. This book shows us how.
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| Customer Reviews:
What's Wrong with Copyright September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As the title indicates, this book examines the great paradox of modern copyright law in America. Copyright was meant to encourage and protect creativity, but is now used to restrict that same expression. For the layperson, copyright law may seem to be a guarantee of compensation for an artist's expressive works for a limited time, after which that expression enters the public domain for the benefit of all Americans. But in the real world (that is, the modern legal and business environment), corporations have hijacked copyright law for ensuring profits and suppressing contrarian speakers, and have heavily lobbied courts and lawmakers to accept this fractured anti-speech and anti-market definition of "expression." In another paradox, media industries complain about how new computerized tools damage their profits and beg lawmakers to stop the proliferation of those tools, while at the same time using that very same technology to gain rights and market power far beyond what copyright allows. Thus, today's legal landscape for copyright is a severe mutation of the law's original intent (from the Founding Fathers) as an engine to promote speech and the progress of knowledge.
As an academic researcher on this subject, I have seen many commentators bemoan these modern problems with copyright law in a variety of settings. But with this book, Netanel has created the most authoritative and concise study yet of the un-American mutation of copyright law into a vehicle for unfettered media industry profits, while it inexorably drifts away from its origins as an incentive for creativity and an engine of free expression. Netanel concludes the book with highly plausible (though overly ambitious, politically speaking) solutions that could just get copyright law back where it belongs - in the creative minds of the people. [~doomsdayer520~]
A must read for those who are interested in copyright and how it interact with first amendment August 6, 2008
Anyone who are interested in or have read Benkler's book The wealth of Networks should read this book. There are many insights of this book, such as the structural function of copyright and the concept and importance of diversity. In a word, Netanel elegantly shows us how copyright enhances(past tense though) and burdens free speech, and he proposes a remaking of copyright base on what he called Free Speech Principle.
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