Customer Reviews

Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet, the Digital Millennium Copyright ACT, Copyright Lobbyists Conquer th

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Litman's timely book, coming two years after the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) radically altered the landscape of copyright law, confronts the current issues we face involving Napster and other file sharing programs, pay-per-use efforts in the software and entertainment industries, and the seemingly arcane and counterintuitive nature of copyright law itself. Writen for the layman, it's easily understandable and a breezy, deeply interesting read for people concerned about how their rights to use the things they buy have changed and may change further in the future.

Part polemic against the encroaching magnification of corporate over individual rights to works, part history of the development of copyright law in the US, Litman's main points as a law professor specializing in copyright law involve the historical lack of representation of individual consumers' rights in the marketplace. Congress historically has simply allowed "interested parties" to collaborate on agreements that Congress then enacted into law. Unfortunately, and as Litman shows again and again, businesses and consumers not at the bargaining table got the short shrift and nascent new industries based on revolutionary technologies (such as piano rolls, movies, etc) were hindered in their development. Those involved in the copyright law negotiations (libraries, unions, and major existing industries and trade groups) tended to get limited exceptions, deals, and special exemptions, while our representatives in Congress have traditionally simply allowed them their way.

Litman then discusses 1998's DMCA and how it, to a degree previously unseen in copyright law, exposes consumers to the will of the producers of works and the vagarities of copyright law, and creates the possibility of a world where one is virtually unable to use their own computer without the permission of the company that owns the operating system and can be forced to pay every time they open a program. Before the microchip, controlling how someone used a product once they bought it was an impossibility and once a person purchased an item they had defined usage, copying, and sharing rights. Now however software companies, movie studios, and the recording industry are examing and testing technologies that allow them to parcel out "use" rights that limit how many times you can watch a movie you've bought, play a game you've purchased, or listen to a song you've already paid your money for, and it's all now legal under the DMCA.

Her cogent explanations of the incoherencies and vagueness of the DMCA itself were able to show me in easy to understand language the problems with the law and the need for a reform of copyright that matches the public perception of their rights to use the things they buy to learn and develop themselves and yet retains the incentive for creation and development of new works by individuals and industries.

This book is essentially a primer on the mess we've gotten into with regards to copyrights and digital media. Litman explains both why the current copyright regime is an ill fit to the "Information Age" as well as how we got here.

Litman's explanation of how Congress has essentially abdicated its responsibilities by turning over the drafting of copyright law to the entrenched business interests is scary. But more frightening are the implications: When major chunks of our culture are locked behind individual use licenses, little room is left for innovation and creativity. The end result, I fear, will be a world where every last piece of information and our entertainment will be fed to us by Disney, Time Warner, and a few other mega-corporations. Not that I have anything against those firms, but a 35-page menu listing only variations of spaghetti is not my idea of fine dining.

Copyright used to be about a bargain - society gave limited rights to copyright owners to encourage creativity - in return society obtained building blocks for further creativity. But the model has changed - now the discussion (such as it is) is about the absolute property rights of the media company. (We don't even talk about "authors" anymore - who wrote "Finding Nemo" anyway?) The result is that the public's end of the bargain has been taken away - fair use is of little use anymore, and the first sale doctrine (which allows you to read, re-read, loan, sell, or destroy this book) has been emptied of any meaning with regards to digital media.

Litman does a great job in explaining how ugly the current copyright laws are, and she demonstrates clearly how the system threatens to stifle innovative new ways to communicate and entertain via the Internet. There is clearly room to build on her arguments to demonstrate that the current regime will likely stifle creativity in general. For more on that general theme, I recommend following up Litman's book with one or two by Lawrence Lessig.

All in all, this book is an easy-to-read but very illuminating starting point in understanding exactly how threatening, and intolerable, the copyright regime has begun. Read it, and weep.

Most of what we have read about copyright in the digital era either is optimistic about the influence of technological protection schemes superceding the more democratic system of copyright or alarmist about "theft." Litman has done us a wonderful service by explaining that there is more at work in the world of cultural and information regulation than most of us suspect.

We are in fact about to be victims of a new technological regime that will severely restrict access to copyrighted works. In clear language, Litman explains how we got into this mess.

I hope everyone who reads and writes buys this book.

Pr. Littman offers a unique and captivating view of copyright law. As she argues, copyright law was created to control the distribution of copies of protected works. Throughout her book, she develops why this does not make sense in a digital world where copies are the basis for information exchange. An other major point of her thesis is that copyright law are to complicated to regulate the daily usage of copyrighted work by ordinary citizens; they simply do not understand the law and cannot imagine that non commercial copying can be an infringement.

The book is well written and will satisfy a legal scholar as well as law students and ordinary citizens. Her arguments are thorough and convincing. I would have liked to read more on the proposed reform of the Law, but maybe her next book will cover this issue in more details.

Generally speaking, I think this book will be one of the milestones on the copyright highway. It's a must read for anyone wanting to understand the process of creating and enforcing copyright law in the digital world.

For the last few years, I have been arguing with friends and co-workers about how the MPAA and the RIAA are quietly shaping copyright law, and not for the betterment of the American (or any) consumer. Litman explains it much better than I ever did and does so in entertaining layman's terms with plenty of real-world examples. Most consumers don't realize that copyright law has evolved from a simple "do not copy" premise to a nearly all-encompassing "do not use unless we say so" restriction. It's too bad that Litman's book isn't required reading in high schools and colleges because if today's youth realized how much their rights were being restricted, they might actually generate enough conflict to reshape the industries (computers, music, movies, television) in which they invest so much time and money.

Professor Litman tackles the dense and often counterintuitive basis of copyright law and delivers an easy to understand explanation of what copyright law is, what it attempts to accomplish, why it was deemed necessary, and how it came to be that copyright owners (e.g., the RIAA) are suing your teenage sons and daughters.

Criticisms of this book in previous reviews cite the fact that the book includes a number of journal articles cobbled together. That's fine with me - the quality of these articles are such that I don't mind the occasional restating of points made in a previous chapter - these are all issues that bear repeating! I understand that the prose is necessarily awkward at times - hey! this is copyright law, it's s'posed to be opaque!

The salient issues (for me) from this book are the following:

1. Copyright law is designed, developed and negotiated by those who have the biggest stake in making the most money.

2. The US Congress, our representative to insure that we, the public, are not shafted by unfair, restrictive copyright laws, have betrayed our trust. They are swayed by lobbyists, large campaign contributions, and rubber stamp whatever the copyright owners want. The consumer's voice (and to a great extent, the voice of emerging technologies as well!) is silent.

3. It's no longer about copying, it's about consuming.

4. The Internet (and the digital technology that accompanies it) provides copyright owners the ability to monitor, meter, enforce and control access. Fair use is (or will be) a thing of the past; "fair use" was grudgingly accepted by copyright owners mainly because preventing copying for "personal use" was deemed "unenforceable". No longer.

We as individual consumers must make our voices heard. Read this book - educate yourself.

This is a good book if you want a detailed history of how copyright law evolved to accomodate digital technology and the Internet. That is the focus of Litman's work. Her writing is engaging and straightforward, and she has good reasons for being pessimistic and disappointed with the current Copyright Act.

I found this book to be an easy read over the weekend and very comprehensible, even to the layperson who does not have a legal background yet who might have interest.

The bottom line is that copyright law and the meshing of digitization is not black and white yet is gray and murky. Until case law and the creatives reach some kind of a negotiation or a consensus, it will continue to be murky.

And, in our society we may have to agree to disagree with certain elements.

One of the strongest points brought out in this book was that if people don't believe in the law, they will not uphold it and there is not a lot that the government can do. I'm certainly not condoning illegal behavior yet there is a strong point to be made.

Our law was supposed to be written as one that would flex with the times yet we've found that digitization challenges the perceptions behind the laws that were set early and into the mid 1900's.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion and the story is still being written yet this book provides an excellent historical context for why copyright is as sensitive and muddy as it is and provides a good look at the dichotomies between the copyright exclusive owners and users.

I found this to be a maddening book to read. The author is a lawyer, and this is apparent from the writing style. I don't know why law schools teach their students to write in such a meandering and confusing manner. However, lawyers should consider that the general population, even the educated portion is not trained (or really interested) in reading this peculiar writing style. Jessica Litman states that she thinks US copyright law has been gerrymandered to the point where it is virtually unintelligible, but then proceeds to do the same thing to her book.

However, if you can stay with this book (no easy chore mind you) you will be rewarded with some good information particularly on the history of copyright protection in the US. The most interesting was the blow by blow account of Napster vs. the music recording industry. There are not many books on this subject. I feel this was a complementary read to Digital Rights Management by Rosenblatt, Trippe and Mooney in that both books cover a similar subject, but did not overlap significantly. I recommend them both.

This is a well-written and interesting history of copyright as it applies to digital works. But, it does not, as the title suggests, tell you much about protecting digital property. The material is informative and has the ring of a very long law review article (or perhaps more likely, a collection of law review articles). Recommended for scholars and curious bystanders of the digital copyright wars but not recommended for those actually trying to protect work on the Net or formulate a policy for exploiting works.