Synopsis

We're in the midst of a contentious legal and cultural battle about copyright and its role in the digital age. Decisions made now will not only influence the music and movie industries, consumers and fans, artists and filmmakers, they will also help define the Net as a medium of communication. As these controversies are slowly being settled, recognition of the broader issues and concerns that they raise remains sporadic. In this class, we will look at recent legal battles in the context of the historical and ideological relationships among authorship, technology, commerce, law, and culture. We will investigate these questions and uncover important issues for cultural participation in a digital world: who gets to speak, what they can say, who will hear, under what conditions communication can occur, and with what consequences. We will consider how the law acts as an arena for the collision of authorship and the market, technology and expression, individual and institution, culture and power.

Expectations

The most important assignment is to read all of the materials thoroughly; I expect everyone to participate fully in class discussions, and this can only work if you have given the readings your full attention. To deepen that conversation, before each Monday session you will be required to post at least one substantial contribution to the course blog, and before each Wednesday, to comment on at least two of your colleagues' posts. (Sometimes I will pose a question to the blog that you can choose to respond to, or you can post about that week's readings.) Your active and meaningful participation online and in class will be graded. A midterm paper, 6-8 pages in length responding to a specific question, will be due in week 9. A final research paper, 15-20 pages, due during exam period, will deal with either some conceptual aspect of these debates or some new controversy -- the topic will be your choice, in consultation with me and with the class. You will be required to turn in a proposal, a rough draft, and then a final version.

Materials

The readings are all available online -- either on the web or inside of our Blackboard site. Check the online syllabus for links and instructions.

Aug 29 -- cultural policy

Venturelli, Shalini. 2000. From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy.
Healy, Kieran. 2002. Digital Technology and Cultural Goods. The Journal of Political Philosophy 10(4): 478-500.

Library of Congress. 2000. Copyright Office Basics
Litman, Jessica. 2001. Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
    Ch 1, "Copyright Basics"
Rose, Mark. 1993. Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
    Ch 2, "The Regime of Regulation"

Fraser, Stephen. 1997. The Conflict Between the First Amendment and Copyright Law and Its Impact on the Internet. Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 16:1-52.
Stanford University Libraries, "Copyright and Fair Use"
    Ch 9, "Fair Use" Hirtle, Peter. 2005. Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the U.S. [chart]

Bettig, Ronald. 1992. Critical Perspectives on the History and Philosophy of Copyright. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (2):131-155.

Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
    Ch 1, "Art Worlds and Collective Activity"
Lethem, Jonathan. 2007. The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism. Harper's, February, 59-71.
Jaszi, Peter. 1991. Toward a Theory of Copyright: The Metamorphoses of 'Authorship'. Duke Law Journal 2: 455-502. [only sections I-IV]

National Research Council. 2000. The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
    Ch 1, "The Emergence of the Digital Dilemma" (pp 23-75)
Barlow, John Perry. 1994. The Economy of Ideas. Wired, 2.03

Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
    Ch 2: "Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation"
Caldwell, John. 2002. "The Business of New Media." In The New Media Book, edited by Dan Harries. London: British Film Institute.
Anderson, Chris. 2004. The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10

Mann, Charles. 2000. The Heavenly Jukebox. Atlantic Monthly, September, 39-59.
Howe, Jeff. 2005. The Shadow Internet. Wired, 13.1.
A&M et. al. v. Napster. 2001. Ninth Circuit Appeals Court revised injunction

Cornell IT Policy: "Message to All Students Regarding the Use of File or Internet Share Systems to Exchange Copyright Material" (August 28, 2006)
Cornell IT Policy: "DC++ and Copyright Liability" (May 11, 2006)
Cornell IT Policy: "Letter to All Students Regarding Recording Industry Association of America "Settlement Letters" and "Preservation Notices"" (April 11, 2007)

Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios. 464 U.S. 417 (1984) - decision
Litman, Jessica. 2005. The Sony Paradox. Case Western Reserve Law Review 55(4): 917-961.
Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. 2005. 545 U.S. 913 (2005) [syllabus only]

Stefik, Mark. 1996. Letting Loose the Light: Igniting Commerce in Electronic Publication. In Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors, edited by M. Stefik. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Godwin, Mike. 2004. What Every Citizen Should Know About DRM, a.k.a. 'Digital Rights Management'. Washington, D.C.: Public Knowledge.
Jobs, Steve. 2007. Thoughts on Music.

Lessig, Lawrence. 1999. Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
    Ch 5, "Regulating Code"
    Ch 7, "What Things Regulate"
Stockton, Dan. 2006. Architectures of control. [blog]
    "What are architectures of control in design?"
    "architectures of control in the built environment"
    "architectures of controlin the digital environment"
    "simple control in products"
    "a diagrammatic representation"
Longford, Graham. 2005. Pedagogies of Digital Citizenship and the Politics of Code. Techné: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 9(1): 68-96.

Oct 10 *no meeting*

Consumer Electronics Association. 2005. Digital America: History.
    Ch 12: "DVD"
Center for Democracy and Technology. 2004. Mapping the Digital Video Copyright Landscape: Stakeholder Interests and the Internet. Washington, D.C.

Oct 22 -- lock, license, and law
paper due

U.S. Copyright Office, summary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)
Jackson, Matt. 2001. Using Technology to Circumvent the Law: The DMCA's Push to Privatize Copyright. Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal 23: 607-646.
DVD Copy Control Association. 2006. CSS License Agreement, Version 1.2.

Universal v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 346 [S.D.N.Y. 2000] - Injunction, August 17, 2000
Eschenfelder, Kristin. 2005. Chasing Down the Social Meaning of DeCSS: Internet Posting of DVD Circumvention Software. Bulletin of ASIST 31 (5): 21-24.
Felten, Edward and Halderman, J. Alex. 2007. Freedom to Tinker [blog]
    "AACS Decryption Code Released"
    "AACS: Extracting and Using Keys"
    "AACS: Blacklisting, Oracles, and Traitor Tracing"
    "AACS: Game Theory of Blacklisting"
    "AACS: Title Keys Start Leaking"
    "AACS: Sequence Keys and Tracing"
    "AACS: Modeling the Battle"
    "AACS: A Tale of Three Keys"
    "AACS: Slow Start on Traitor Tracing"
    "AACS Plays Whack-a-Mole with Extracted Key"
    "Digg users Revolt over AACS Key"
    "Why the 09ers Are So Upset"
    "AACS Updated, Broken Again"

Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 2004. iTunes: How Copyright, Contract, and Technology Shape the Business of Digital Media - A Case Study
Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman. 2006. iTunes Violates Norwegian Law. Forbrukerombudet
Brand, Constant. 2007. EU Starts Probe into Apple's iTunes. AP (April 3)

Kusek, David and Leonhard, Gerd. 2005. The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. Boston: Berklee Press.
    Ch 7, "A New Music Economy"

Samuelson, Pamela. 2007. Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform.
Litman, Jessica. 2001. Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
    Ch 12, "Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age"
Lessig, Lawrence. 2004. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin Books.     excerpt from "Afterword": 292-306
Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2004. A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.

Creative Commons
    History
    Licenses
Vaidhyanthan, Siva. 2005. Creative Commons: Making copyright work for democracy. openDemocracy (July 13, 2005)
Price, Tony Curzon. 2007. The Reinvention of Scarcity. openDemocracy (July 13)

Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
    Ch 3: "Peer Production and Sharing"
Cohen, Julie. 2006. Pervasively Distributed Copyright Enforcement. Georgetown Law Journal 95.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old Media and New Media Collide.
    Ch 4: "Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry"
Lessig, Lawrence. 2004. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin Books.
    Ch 12: "Harms"

Charman, Suw and Holloway, Michael. 2006. Copyright in a Collaborative Age. M/C 9.2
Google: Search or Destroy? openDemocracy

Nov 26 -- ...for scholarship and knowledge

Samuelson, Pamela. 2003. DRM {and, or, vs.} the Law. Communications of the ACM 46 (4): 41-45.
Willinsky, John. 2006. The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    Ch 1, "Opening"
    Ch 2, "Access"
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2003. The anarchy and oligarchy of science. openDemocracy (July 24)

Gandy, Oscar. 2002. The Real Digital Divide: Citizens v. Consumers. In The Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, edited by Leah Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone. London: Sage.
Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
    Ch 11: "Policies of Freedom at a Moment of Transformation"

"Absolute integrity is expected of every Cornell student in all academic undertakings. Integrity entails a firm adherence to a set of values, and the values most essential to an academic community are grounded on the concept of honesty with respect to the intellectual efforts of oneself and others. Academic integrity is expected not only in formal coursework situations, but in all University relationships and interactions connected to the educational process, including the use of University resources. While both students and faculty of Cornell assume the responsibility of maintaining and furthering these values, this document is concerned specifically with the conduct of students.

A Cornell student's submission of work for academic credit indicates that the work is the student's own. All outside assistance should be acknowledged, and the student's academic position truthfully reported at all times. In addition, Cornell students have a right to expect academic integrity from each of their peers."

The full text of the Code of Academic Integrity can be found online at