Present Reading: Siva Vaidhyanathan's
The Anarchist in the Library.
This was published in 2004 as a follow-up to his first book,
Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity.
When I first purchased the book two years ago, I read it only superficially. But these last few years have really awoken within me a tremendous interest in digital media ethics and copyright reform and reading the introduction instantly revealed that this text was worth a proper read with newly-opened eyes.
The book begins with the international lawsuits surrounding Dmitry Sklyarov's exposing of the incredibly weak protection of Adobe's ebook decryption software, (which cost $99 in 2001).
From the intro:
Quote:
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"The Sklyarov case raises some important questions about how the information environment will be regulated in the twenty-first century. Can a cultural industry survive or thrive without high protection from the state? Should governments try to enforce information policies across borders and oceans? Is it possible to prevent the invention and distribution of a small batch of code or an algorithm? What implications do such laws and technologies have for imagination, expression, adaptation, and aggregation of culture and information? What impact will these laws have on science and mathematics research? What does it mean for the future of democracy when a nation prosecutes someone for opening up the electronic text of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?"
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