Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet 1st Edition

by Jessica Litman (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1573928892

ISBN-10: 1573928895

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In 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts.

In this enlightening and well-argued book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of such laws on the exchange of information in a free society?

Litman's critique exposes the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork. She argues for reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.
This paperback edition includes an afterword that comments on recent developments, such as the end of the Napster story, the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, the escalation of a full-fledged copyright war, the filing of lawsuits against thousands of individuals, and the June 2005 Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case.

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Litman (law, Wayne State Univ.) offers a surprisingly readable, even entertaining dissection of 1998's Digital Millennium laws passed throughout the 20th century. Central to her exegesis is a critique of the method of drafting legislation, begun just about 100 years ago, that lets the interested parties negotiate among themselves and submit to legislators proposed amendments and revisions. She includes libraries as parties with special interests in this system and notes that the most important group consumers is inevitably not represented. And she has special disdain for her fellow Chapters jump from a historical investigation of legislative practice, to comparison of several recent technological challenges to copyright, to an explanation of how shifts in the understanding of underlying principle have shaped the law. In the end, Litman proposes a vastly simplified system but admits that "a wholesale reconceptualization of copyright law seems unlikely-. There are not many Don Quixotes in Washington." Recommended for all types of libraries. Eric Bryant, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Readers with an interest in doing business on the Internet, or in the specific issue of copyright, should not be without this book. The author, a recognized expert in copyright law, demonstrates how the World Wide Web has the potential to restructure copyright laws in the U.S. It's a tricky, complicated issue in which questions of control versus access are paramount. How, for instance, do you regulate the use of a copyrighted work when anyone who logs onto the Net can access it for free? Do you try to charge each computer user a royalty? To put all this in its proper context, Litman provides a capsule history of U.S. copyright law, showing how every development in the technology of publishing has brought further refinement and further complications to the law. At the center of the book is a single question: Do the new statutes now being proposed by copyright holders make sense? The book is quite technical in places, but it's also clearly written and sensibly argued. A timely and very useful resource. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"...a very common-sense approach to understanding copyright law and history ... perfect for non-experts..." -- What You Need to Know About

"...enlightening and well-argued..." -- Tech Directions

"...intriguing, provocative, thought-provoking...suitable for general interest readers and intellectual property specialists alike." -- The Colorado Lawyer, November 2001

"Litman's argument that copyright laws are artificially stacked against emerging technologies is a persuasive one." -- Inside Magazine, March 6, 2001

"Professor Jessica Litman...is known in the copyright community as a scholar on the fringe...brilliant and challenging..." -- New York Law Journal, July 6, 2001

"anyone interested in copyright, and anyone who wishes to defend and strengthen it, should pay careful attention to [these] arguments." -- Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts

"delivers a wealth of information, both historical and legal...in language that is easy to follow..." -- College & Research Libraries

"easy to follow...designed like a textbook for copyright law, and librarians will benefit from the information found here." -- College and Research Libraries, November 2001

"informative, intelligent, and even amusing...provides a clear picture of why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act matters..." -- Information Technology and Libraries, December 2001

From the Publisher

"DIGITAL COPYRIGHT is a short, readable, accurate, and insightful study of copyright legislation and the changes required in our thinking about copyright in the digital age. It should be required reading for legislators and their staffers, as well as federal judges, who must implement copyright policy in concrete cases and who desperately need an understandable framework for making their decisions. It is also an excellent book for both specialist and general lawyers and, indeed, members of the public who want to understand the usually impenetrable and always arcane world of copyright law." -- Jurimetrics (Journal of Law, Science and Technology), Fall 2001

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus Books; 1st edition (November 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1573928895
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573928892
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,593,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #391 in Copyright Law
- #503 in Computer & Internet Law
- #687 in Science & Technology Law (Books)

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Martin A. Miller

Eye opening; everyone should read this book

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2006

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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.

4 people found this helpful

Good information, feels dated in approach

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2012

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If you need this information, it will satisfy you. Not particularly fun to read about (maybe because it feels slightly old or behind the times), but probably helped lay the foundation for current thoughts on copyright. I prefer Pirate's Dilemma or Lawrence Lessig (Code, Remix) instead.

angelcorpuschristi

Interesting but not helpful

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2001

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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.

17 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Where did my fair use go?

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2004

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.

10 people found this helpful

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ema

Nuovo ma senza novità

Reviewed in Italy on September 4, 2020

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Il problema è che, soprattutto riguardo alla protezione del software, non ci sono grandi novità di rilievo. Peggio ancora se si considera l'inattuabile Decreto Europeo del 17 marzo 2019 che non risolve il problema per i contenuti dell'informazione.

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