The war about intellectual property

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

___

Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889



 ..... Forwarded Message .......
From: Dan Hunter <hunterd () wharton upenn edu>
To: dave () farber net
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:28:56 -0400
Subj: The war about intellectual property

Hi Dave:

For IP if you like.  A draft paper of mine about the war over 
intellectual property, conceived as a Marxist class struggle.  Will 
enrage both sides, no doubt.  Comments welcome.

best wishes

Dan.

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CULTURE WAR

Abstract: Over the last ten years, much of copyright and patent has 
come under attack from those who suggest that capture by private 
interests has had a pernicious influence on public policy in this 
field.  In the related areas of telecommunication spectrum management 
and internet regulation there have emerged strong arguments for not 
allocating private property interests, and instead considering these 
domains as commons property.  I suggest that, together, these 
developments form part of a culture war, a war over the means of 
production of creative content in our society.  I argue that the best 
way to understand this war is to view it as a Marxist struggle.  
However, I suggest that copyright and patent reform—where commentators 
have actually been accused of Marxism—is not where the Marxist 
revolution is taking place.  Instead I locate that revolution 
elsewhere, most notably in the rise of open source production and 
dissemination of cultural content.

Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586463

---

Dan Hunter
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104 USA
Research at http://www.ssrn.com/author_id=243354


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