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.









