Siva Vaidhyanathan

"If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, energize hatred and bigotry, erode social trust, undermine respectable journalism, foster doubts about science, and engage in massive surveillance all at once, you would make something a lot like Facebook. Of course, none of that was part of the plan. In Antisocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging. It's an account of the hubris of good intentions, a missionary spirit, and an ideology that sees computer code as the universal solvent for all human problems...Both authoritative and trenchant, Antisocial Media shows how Facebook's mission went so wrong."--Book description, Amazon.com.

This book addresses several aspects of the law and economics of intellectual property rights (IPRs) that have been underanalyzed in the existing literature. It begins with a brief overview of patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks, and the enforcement and licensing of IPRs, focusing on the remedies available for infringement (injunctions, various forms of damages, and damages calculation issues); the standard of care (strict liability versus an intent- or negligence-based standard); and the rules for determining standing to sue and joinder of defendant for IPR violations. The authors demonstrate that the core assumption of IPR regimes - that IPRs maximize certain social benefits over social costs by providing a necessary inducement for the production and distribution of intellectual products - have several important implications for the optimal design of remedies, the standard of care, and the law of standing and joinder.

"The recording industry has sued the music downloaders into submission, but as a model of communication, their effects still echo around the world. The proliferation of such peer-to-peer networks may appear to threaten many established institutions, and the backlash against them could be even worse than the problems they create. Their effects - good and bad - resonate far beyond markets for music. They are altering our sense of the possible, extending our cultural and political imaginations." "Unregulated networks of communication have existed as long as gossip has. But with the rise of electronic communication, they are exponentially more important. And they are drawing the contours of a struggle over information that will determine much of the culture and politics of our century, from unauthorized fan edits of Star Wars to terrorist organizations' reliance on "leaderless resistance." The Anarchist in the Library is the first guide to one of the most important cultural and economic developments of our time."--BOOK JACKET.

In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission -- "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible" -- and its much-quoted motto, "Don't be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google, and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid. - Publisher.

"Copyright reflects far more than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and infringement are cultural values - about access, ownership, free speech, race, class, and democracy - which influence how rights are determined and enforced. Questions of legitimacy - of what constitutes "intellectual property" or "fair use," and of how to locate a precise moment of cultural creation - have become enormously complicated in recent years, as advances in technology have exponentially increased the speed of cultural reproduction and dissemination. In Copyrights and Copywrongs, Siva Vaidhyanathan tracks the history of American copyright law through the twentieth century, from Mark Twain's vehement exhortations for "thick" copyright protection to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the "digital moment," exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology. He argues that in its current punitive, highly restrictive form, American copyright law hinders cultural production, thereby contributing to the poverty of civic culture"--BOOK JACKET.