• Bound by Law (Tales form the Public Domain)

Want to understand some copyright law but don't want to read all this technical stuff? Try this comic book version from the Duke Centre for the Public Domain.

• Copyright in a Collaborative Age, by Suw Charman and Michael Holloway (both working with the Open Rights Group.

A review of the effects of copyright on collaboration amongst creators, artists and all of us. And their conclusion:

"Copyright law has, in general, failed to keep up with the amazing progress shown by technology and human ingenuity. It is time that the lawmakers learnt how to collaborate with the collaborators in order to bring copyright up to date."

• Fixing What’s Badly Broken (pdf), by Bennett Lincoff

Starts with a good introduction to the woes of the music industry and the problems for the copyright regime as music makes its way onto the Internet (or not). Lincoff then goes on to propose a new 'digital transmission right' where:

"The rights of songwriters, music publishers, recording artists and record labels in their respective musical works and sound recordings should be aggregated so as to create a single right for digital transmissions of recorded music."

The interesting feature of this approach is that only the 'transmission' of the work would need a license and hence it would leave consumers free to make personal copies and help remove the need for technological protection measures.

• Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain (pdf), by Julie E. Cohen

Prof. Cohen argues that society should move away from a property/permissions-base model for copyright and instead adopt a cultural landscape model:

"If one asks where the common in artistic culture may be found, the answer, quite simply, is that it is everywhere the public is, and that unplanned, fortuitous access and opportunistic borrowing are matters of the utmost importance. Applying these insights, we can construct a new model of the relationship between the public and proprietary in copyright law, which I will call the cultural landscape model. The entitlements described by this formulation do not comprise a geographically or ontologically separate entity; instead, they are baseline rights of access to and engagement with the cultural landscape in which we all exist."

• Book Digitization and Digital Libraries, by David Bearman (D-Lib Magazine)

An interesting discussion on what it takes to make intellectual contributions available via digital libraries. In this article Bearman extensively refers to Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe, by Jean-Noël Jeanneney.

• Let the IP debate begin …, by Becky Hogge for Open Democracy.

A good introduction to the Gowers Review of IP (see below) and the issues surounding the intellectual property debate.

• Gowers Review of Intellectual Property

An influential and wide ranging review of intellectual property commissioned by the UK treasury:

"The Review sets out a number of targeted, practical recommendations to deliver a robust Intellectual Property framework fit for the digital age. The principle recommendations of the Review are aimed at:

• tackling IP crime and ensuring that rights are well enforced;
• reducing the costs and complexity of the system; and
• reforming copyright law to allow individuals and institutions to use content in ways consistent with the digital age."

• Sell a Band - A new Internet business where fans can support their favorite bands by contributing to the group's CD recording and production costs. In return the fans get a copy of the CD and a share of advertising revenue earned. - "Artists and fans have one goal. Make music and profit together." (See Open Business for discussion.)

• Copyright Jungle, Columbia Journalism Review, 2006, by Siva Vaidhyanathan:

  "Here’s a primer for reporters who find themselves lost in the copyright jungle: American copyright law offers four basic democratic safeguards to the censorious power of copyright, a sort of bargain with the people. Each of these safeguards is currently at risk."

• Now you © it, soon you won't

'The laws of copyright are being rendered meaningless by the growth of ditial technology. So how will writers and artists earn a crust?' Jamie King discusses copyright and some of the ditital issues.

• Washington Internet Project

'The Washington Internet Project is a pro-bono effort dedicated to raising awareness of and promoting participation in federal initiatives relevant to the Internet. The Project provides timely notice of regulatory proceedings, hearings, meeting, proposed legislation, and public notices. The Project also provides forums where regulatory developments can be discussed and debated. The Project is not involved in advocacy, lobbying, or representation.'

• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people ”lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries” working to protect your digital rights.

• The Economy of Ideas By John Perry Barlow of the EFF

Obviously, I should have included this important paper from the start - "A framework for patents and copyrights in the digital age"

• Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding

Mark Lemley takes an economic view of treating intellectual property is a form of property.

'Finally, I consider whether we would be better served by another metaphor than the misused notion of intellectual property as a form of tangible property.'

• Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world.

'This paper discusses the failure of DRM in the developed world, where it has been in wide deployment for a decade with no benefit to artists and with substantial cost to the public and to due process, free speech and other civil society fundamentals.'

• Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage By Richard M. Stallman

'It has become fashionable to describe copyright, patents, and trademarks as "intellectual property". This fashion did not arise by accident--the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion. Anyone wishing to think clearly about any of these laws would do well to reject the term.'

• Digital Rights Management: A Guide for Librarians By Michael Godwin

'DRM also, of course, has an effect on how copyright law functions in our society. Librarians often have relied on the provisions of copyright law to ensure that libraries can perform their proper functions. But DRM technologies can be used to ìtrumpî copyright law by depriving librarians -- and citizens in general -- of rights they are granted by copyright law. Such an overbroad use of DRM technologies may raise questions about whether we should ask legislators or the courts to bring the uses of DRM into line with the rights we as citizens have come to expect under copyright law.'

• Copy South:

A loosley-affiliated group of researchers based in a number of countries across the South and the North who seek to research the inner workings of the global copyright system and its largely negative effects on the global South.

"Are we really living in an information society, when most information has been privatized?"