Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity [Hardcover]

Michael Perelman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312294085 | ISBN-13: 978-0312294083 | Publication Date: April 20, 2002

This book describes how corporate powers have erected a rapacious system of intellectual property rights to confiscate the benefits of creativity in science and culture. This legal system threatens to derail both economic and scientific progress, while disrupting society and threatening personal freedom. Perelman argues that the natural outcome of this system is a world of excessive litigation, intrusive violations of privacy, the destruction system of higher education, interference with scientific research, and a lopsided distribution of income.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Perelman (economics, California State Univ.) presents the position that intellectual property rights private ownership of patents, trademarks, and copyrights inhibit scientific development, constrain creativity, foster litigation, waste resources, and unfairly distribute power and money. Perelman relates illustrative incidents from universities, drug companies, publishing houses, technology developers, government agencies, and the courts. The stories bolster his arguments and help to explain the complicated evolution of law and policy that, in his view, have created an overreaching system that strangles the economy, science, art, and democracy itself. As Perelman admits, this book lays out the problems and not the solutions, which he sees as requiring nothing short of a complete overhaul of the institutions that handle ideas and information. The book persuasively argues Perelman's point of view. Libraries that purchased Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs may want to add Perelman's book, as he does for patents what Vaidhyanathan did for copyright. This timely, thoughtful work is recommended for large public and academic libraries. Joan Pedzich, Harris Beach, LLP, Rochester, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Steal This Idea deals with major issues surrounding IP in one neat and accessible work."--Virginia Brown Keyder, European Intellectual Property Review
"The book persuasively argues Perelman's point of view...this timely, thoughtful work is recommended..." -- Library Journal
"This useful and thought-provoking look at the economic effects of property rights in all their forms is recommended..."--Choice

 

"A wide, penetrating analysis of IPR and a refreshing critique of the whole concept of intellectual property." --Review of Radical Political Economics

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 20, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312294085
• ISBN-13: 978-0312294083
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,830,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who shall own knowledge?, July 9, 2002

By 

Ian Murray - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity (Hardcover)

Why does our property rights system grant huge sums of money to people who did nothing to create the knowledge that is the source of their wealth? Should so-called "private" corporations be allowed to make hundreds of millions of dollars off Federal and State court cases? Should workers be thrown in jail for filing patents in ideas that the companies they've worked at have ignored as unworthy of consideration for patenting?

These kinds of issues strain our sense of just what property is and as Michael Perelman shows in his clearly written text full of actual yet surreal economic events, the US, indeed the global community of nations, is in dire need of a serious rethinking of property rights in knowledge information and natural resources if we are to avoid the litigatory nuthouse.

Professor Perelman also notes that without a cultural rethink inequalities of income, wealth and power will, in all probability, get even worse, with tragic repercussions for democracy, liberty and the production of future knowledge as well.

By investigating scores and scores of episodes from economic history, both recent and remote, Professor Perelman also shows that was has traditionally been called a free market is in fact a legal oxymoron, as well as inconsistent with what we now know from economic and political theory. As such his book holds important lessons regarding what kinds of questions we need to be asking in all seriousness regarding how our modes of organizing work and citizenship may actually stifle freedom and creativity in producing and distributing knowledge and information.

In an era when genomes, ecosystems and algorithms are being commodified and appropriated at such a frenzied pace, we would do well to ask as many questions as possible about who shall benefit and who will be burdened. All in all, a must read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Silent Thieves, October 17, 2002

By 

David Hoech (Hallandle, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity (Hardcover)

Street thieves are incarcerated and corporate thieves are rewarded in our society. I have read Professor Perelman's book "Steal This Idea" twice and feel I am just coming to grips with the silent government running our country. Corporate America is the enemy of democracy through its donations to elected officials, retainers to influential Washington law firms, and its control of our media.

Dwight D. Eisenhower stated, "Every step we take toward making the State the caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our master." Corporations have merged to purge Americans of their wealth, creativity, and civil rights. Professor Perelman is to be commended for his exposition "How Intellectual Property Rights Enrich the Few While Undermining Liberty, Science, and Society." Read this book and you will learn how your civil rights and your freedom are slipping away rapidly.

I also bought five books for friends, as I didn't want them to be walking around in a fog not knowing what we have become as a nation. Karl Marx wrote, "In the valley of the blind with one eye you can be king." We are in the valley. Read the book, wake up, and be your own king.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I continue to recall ideas presented in this book, September 3, 2008

By 

Pam Gill "Pam Gill" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity (Hardcover)

I learned quite a bit from reading this book. I did not know that the business of intellectual property was so large and preventing so many people from getting the technology which would improve their lives. I had no idea that many people receiving the financial benefits from owning patents didn't actually develop the ideas, but simply were the first to get to the patent office and file the paperwork.

I have stolen the ideas he offered up in this book and shared them with many other people. I found myself this weekend making several referrals to the book. I wanted to be sure of the author's name and so here I am looking on Amazon and thinking I should thank him for the ideas I have stolen from him. I am a member of Technocracyinc.org and his ideas fit together well with that developed body of knowledge. Technocracy has always promoted the stealing of its ideas too.