Digital Rights Management: The Problem of Expanding Ownership Rights

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Elsevier Science, 2007 M01 31 - 180 pages
Digital Rights Management examines the social context of new digital rights management (DRM) technologies in a lively and accessible style. It sets out the scope of DRMs in non-technical terms and then explores the shifts that DRM has produced within the regime of protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Focusing on the social norms around the protection of IPRs, it examines the music industry and software development sector to ask whether the protections established by DRM are legitimate and socially beneficial. Using these key examples to establish a more general argument, the books central conclusion is that rather than merely re-establishing threatened rights, the development of DRM has extended the rights of intellectual property owners, and that such an extension violates previous carefully balanced political compromises as regards the maintenance of the public domain.

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Contents

software
27
Notes
33
Digital rights management the norms of copyright
46
Copyright

8 other sections not shown

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About the author (2007)

Dr Christopher May is Reader in International Political Economy at the University of the West of England. His books include A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights. The New Enclosures and The Information Society. A Sceptical View. He has published widely on IPRs.

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