Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity FROM THE PUBLISHER
Conventional wisdom argues that intellectual property rights are a necessary and powerful driver of economic progress. By shielding inventions and intellectual work from dangerous competition, these rights supposedly encourage creativity. In reality, by looking at the nexus of science policy, copyright, and new technologies, Perelman shows convincingly that current laws actually throttle innovation and progress. Intellectual property rights grant enormous powers to corporations but offer very little to the creative artist or inventor. Perelman shows how current intellectual property rights do more damage than good by promoting fragmentation, unnecessary duplication, secrecy, and frequent litigation. Steal This Idea explores options for moving beyond the current regime to one that truly fosters intellectual progress and results in a more equitable distribution of goods created under its watch.
SYNOPSIS
Indicting the current regime of intellectual property rights as offering great power to corporations but little incentive to actual creators of worth and as being dangerous to democracy itself, Perelman (economics, California State U. at Chico) details some of the more egregious cases of injustice in the name of intellectual property and explores some of their implications. He argues that they make the intellectual undermines economic efficiency, creates a more intrusive society, and increases the gap in the distribution of income. He suggests that we should see knowledge and information as a social good (i.e. the property of all). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Choice
Perelman's wry sense of humor...makes this excellent book surprisingly readable and one that deserves to be widely read.
Library Journal
Perelman (economics, California State Univ.) presents the position that intellectual property rights private ownership of patents, trademarks, and copyrights inhibit scientific development, constrain creativity, foster litigation, waste resources, and unfairly distribute power and money. Perelman relates illustrative incidents from universities, drug companies, publishing houses, technology developers, government agencies, and the courts. The stories bolster his arguments and help to explain the complicated evolution of law and policy that, in his view, have created an overreaching system that strangles the economy, science, art, and democracy itself. As Perelman admits, this book lays out the problems and not the solutions, which he sees as requiring nothing short of a complete overhaul of the institutions that handle ideas and information. The book persuasively argues Perelman's point of view. Libraries that purchased Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs may want to add Perelman's book, as he does for patents what Vaidhyanathan did for copyright. This timely, thoughtful work is recommended for large public and academic libraries. Joan Pedzich, Harris Beach, LLP, Rochester, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Indicting the current regime of intellectual property rights as offering great power to corporations but little incentive to actual creators of worth and as being dangerous to democracy itself, Perelman (economics, California State U. at Chico) details some of the more egregious cases of injustice in the name of intellectual property and explores some of their implications. He argues that they make the intellectual undermines economic efficiency, creates a more intrusive society, and increases the gap in the distribution of income. He suggests that we should see knowledge and information as a social good (i.e. the property of all). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Home
