Thanks Arne for alerting us to this! And yes, preposterous, but not surprising given what’s been going on in other areas like this for some time now, i.e., “how corporations misuse copyright and trademark law to stifle creativity and free speech” - http://www.brandnamebullies.com/. See also http://www.bollier.org/category/tags/copyright-law. The popular music side of the IP issue has gotten lots of attention from media scholars, but not so much this dimension, yet. Maybe this is the kind of wake up call that we often need about policy stuff that seems unimportant/irrelevant/or just downright boring until it hits our own door.

Teaching this stuff helps a lot as students take up activism once they get the bug. I’ve been using Bollier’s book in my undergrad course for 3 years now and even though it’s somewhat out of date and has an American slant, students seem to take to it if you want to pass it on: http://www.silenttheft.com. Also, a video to be aware of is from Consumers International, a project I’m researching and also doing evaluation work for: http://a2knetwork.org/film. They’ve also produced a handbook, which I highly recommend circulating: http://a2knetwork.org/handbook. French and Spanish versions are available.

For those new to this stuff, groups to consider joining or linking to are http://ipjustice.org/, http://www.digitalrights.dk/, http://www.eff.org/, http://a2knetwork.org/forum, http://www.boell.de/economysocial/economy/economy-commons-10451.html, http://www.keionline.org.

Cheers,
Becky
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Roberta G. (Becky) Lentz, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Arts Building, W-265
Montreal, QC Canada H3A 2T6
http://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/faculty/lentz/
(o) 514.398.4995
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