ISHTIP

Zac Zimmer, “Commons: Copyleft as Training Ground” In order to advance our thinking about the commons, we are faced with two needed and interrelated theoretical tasks: 1) to connect the recent enthusiasm around alternative models of intellectual property regimes–broadly grouped under the general concepts of copyleft and the creative commons–to the ur-historical struggle centered around… Read More

Matthias Wießner, “The German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the International Copyright Regime” East German politicians had to decide if the 1949-founded GDR should continue to be a member of the Berne Convention. The occupying power, the Soviet Union, refused participation in the multilateral Berne Convention. This raised the question of whether the GDR should follow… Read More

Simon Stern, “From Author’s Right to Property Right” This paper examines the arguments developed in eighteenth-century England for regarding copyright as a property right.  The Act of Anne (1710) uses the language of property sparingly, speaking of protection for “authors and proprietors of . . . books and writings,” and explaining the need to safeguard… Read More

Will Slauter, “How News Becomes Property” Periodicals devoted to current events have been around since the beginning of the 17th century, and the first copyright statutes appeared in the 18th century, when many of our most fundamental ideas about authorship and ownership took shape. Yet no news writer or publisher seriously claimed a property in… Read More

Katie Scott, “Mapping Plagiarism in a Regime of Privilege” The charge of plagiarism dispenses with the calendar and substitutes the map.  It takes a moral position in relation to artistic idea, arguably judging it always already an inalienable possession.  The passage of time does not lessen the crime.  Rather plagiarism operates and is identified by… Read More

Dwijen Rangnekar, “Re-Making Place: The Social Construction of a Geographical Indication for Feni” A range of social movements mobilise around and seek to valorise ‘place-based’ imageries. There is, these movements argue, vitality in place. And this constitutes a crucial element of critiques of power/globalisation. As anthropologists remind us, people continue to construct some form of… Read More

Marc Perlman, “Should There Be Property Rights in Folklore? Surveying the Intellectual Landscape of the Debate” Along with the drive to expand intellectual property rights, a movement is underway to propertize traditional culture (folklore). Both initiatives have provoked counter-arguments. But while criticism of the extension of IP rights has been forcefully articulated, opposition to the… Read More

Doris Estelle Long, “The Continuation of the Geographic Boundaries of Empire in the New Digital Order” Current battles over the nature and scope of protection afforded creative and innovative activities in the “new digital order” have strong resonances with historic battles over the territorial boundaries that formed the basis for the 19th Century Empires whose… Read More