Big Copyright Versus the People: How Major Content Providers Are Destroying Creativity and How to Stop Them

Description

When the idea of copyright was enshrined in the Constitution it was intended to induce citizens to create. Today, however, copyright has morphed into a system that offers the bulk of its protection to a select number of major corporate content providers (or Big Copyright), which has turned us from a country of creators into one of consumers who spend, on average, ten hours each day on entertainment. In this alarming but illuminating book, Martin Skladany examines our culture of overconsumption and shows not only how it leads to addiction, but also how it is unraveling important threads - of family, friendship, and community - in our society. Big Copyright versus the People should be read by anyone interested in understanding how Big Copyright managed to get such a lethal grip on our culture and what can be done to loosen it.

Martin Skladany is an assistant professor at Penn State Dickinson Law. Previously, as a Litigation Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton, he was a member of the legal team that represented the Association of American Publishers in their copyright suit against Google over Google Books.

'Proceeding from a highly provocative attack on corporate media and its effect on our creative lives, Big Copyright versus the People offers a multitude of wonderfully inventive proposals for reform.' Barton Beebe, New York University School of Law 'A delightful catalog of clever ways to keep Big Copyright in check and open up more space for creativity in people's daily lives.' James Grimmelmann, Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School 'Big Copyright versus the People is not just a critique of an out-of-control system that privileges private over public interests - though it certainly is that. It's also an essential treasury of ideas about how to fix that system: some down-to-earth and some absolutely mind-expanding. No one who cares about the future of ideas should miss this erudite, accessible, and stylish volume.' Peter Jaszi, American University Washington College of Law