Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture

While the public and the media have been distracted by the story of Napster, warnings about the evils of “piracy” and lawsuits by the recording and film industries, the enforcement of copyright law in the digital world has quietly shifted from regulating copying to regulating the design of technology. Lawmakers and commercial interests are pursuing what might be called a technical fix: instead of specifying what can and cannot be done legally with a copyrighted work, this new approach calls for the strategic use of encryption technologies to build standards of copyright directly into digital devices, rendering some uses impossible. What does this shift to “technical copy protection” mean, and what are its political, economic and cultural implications?

Speaker Details

Tarleton Gillespie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, with an affiliation with the Information Science Program and the Science and Technology department. He also serves as a non-residential fellow with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and was recently awarded the Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award at Cornell. Gillespie received his B.A. in English from Amherst, and both his M.A. and his Ph.d in Communication from UC/San Diego.

Date:
Speakers:
Tarleton Gillespie
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Dept of Communications and Fellow, Center for the Internet and Society, Stanford Law School

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