DRM News

Copyright law was conceived when only a few people had the ability to mass-produce intellectual property. Computers and the Internet, however, have opened a whole new can of worms, allowing almost anyone to copy almost anything and distribute it widely. Instead of relying on the enforcement of copyright laws, more and more industries are relying on such technologies as encryption to protect their content.

In his first book, "Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture" (MIT Press), Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell assistant professor of communication and information science, explores the profound political, economic and cultural implications of using "technical copy protection" to do the work that copyright laws did before the digital age.

In his first chapter, which serves as an introduction to the book and is available online in full, Gillespie writes that his book looks beyond standard legal critiques of copyright by exploring recent theories of technology, communication and culture to consider broader ramifications. Digital copyright, he says, is the perfect place to look at how we use the mechanisms of law, technology and the marketplace to structure cultural expression, and how the outcomes of today's controversies concerning digital copyright will largely shape the future of digital culture.