Copyright wars

Should copyright assure authors and rights holders lasting claims, much like conventional property rights, or should copyright be primarily concerned with giving consumers cheap and easy access to a shared culture? In this Vox Talk, Peter Baldwin – author of the book ‘The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Transatlantic Battle’ – outlines how America went from being a leading copyright opponent and pirate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become the world’s intellectual property policeman today. He describes a ‘Californian civil war’ over open access: between the content owners in Hollywood and the high-tech companies in Silicon Valley.

A link to the interview is available here.