Digital Property Resources
  1. Download and read the Unbundling Intellectual Property Rights essay on pages 6-7 of the UBC Faculty Focus. This reinforces the first section of Chapter 3 in the textbook. This essay also introduces issues involved with the design of distance or online education courses and specifically IPRs in the MET program.
  2. Download and read the Technology and Rights essay, which places copyrights alongside trademarks and patents. Copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and patents create a system of IPRs that increasingly work more for global corporate power than the public interest.
  3. If you have never read John Perry Barlow's classic "A Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace," now is the time. Barlow is a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has been an activist on issues of free expression and IP radicalism.
  4. Download, for your cybrary, Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, an extremely insightful analysis of the challenges of digital property to copyright and IP law. The two available videos are also great resources. Search the web for Solum's review, titled "The Future of Copyright," for a good analysis of Lessig's book.
  5. Browse some key digital property web sites, and some of the resources provided in the resource section of this module. Start with the IP on the Web tutorial and then proceed to the Canadian IP Office for an example of copyright terms and laws. In Canada, a copyright is granted to authors and extends to 50 years after the author's death. Copyright loopholes and expirations are some of the ways in which digital property makes its way into the Public Domain. Now go to Barlow's "The Economy of Ideas," which he published in Wired. For an alternative view of copyrights and digital property.
  6. If you are not familiar with David Noble's Digital Diploma Mills, a critique of online distance education, now is the time to browse this groundbreaking essay on IPRs and education.
  7. One strand of the open source movement is oriented toward the sharing of software code. The Free Software Foundation is at the heart of this movement, as is Linux International. Mozilla is a good example of the fruits of the open source movement. MIT's Opencourseware initiative is a creative example of higher education's approach to open source. For open source applications see the Linux site and the Technology Workshop.
  8. Creative Commons offers progressive solutions and deeds for the challenges of P2P, open knowledge, sampling and general file sharing. Browse the Creative Commons web site for a sense of how these solutions work or challenge digital property.
  9. Have you ever downloaded a music mp3? Were you breaking IP law or merely stretching the law? Were you acting out of desire or exercising your Consumer Technology Bill of Rights? Have you formed a philosophy on digital property? Napster (P2P application and website) transformed the way we dealt with digital music files but was ordered to shut down business in 2001. However, P2P applications such as Gnutella (Linux & Windows) and Limewire (Mac) replaced Napster and provide an ease in downloading mp3 that Napster aspired to.
  10. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing and sampling are just two common activities that have run up against copyright laws. What are your views on P2P and sampling? Kembrew McLeod's new book, Copyright Criminals: Freedom of Expression addresses these activities and their discontents. Download for your research.