Category: books

I Read a Book: Making is Connecting – The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0

by Keidra Chaney

The “Maker” Movement has been gaining a lot of steam in the past couple of years as the logical evolution of the Internet revolution, but making stuff for the Internet still doesn’t really get much respect as an outlet for creativity.

If you go to a cocktail party and tell people that you make furniture or jewelry in your spare time, then you’ll likely get a few interested (or at least polite) responses. If you mention that you’re, say, a blogger or fanvid maker, you’ll likely get at least one “living in your mom’s basement” or “sitting in your underwear” comment. Unless you are making money from your blog or videos, which is socially acceptable. The concept of “craft” and “hobby” is still very much connected to materials created by hand rather than ideas and less tangible “products” (writing, visual art, music) and the professionalization of creative expression has definitely contributed to the perception of hobbyist media-makers as mere amateurs.

Books like Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture have stated a strong case for collaborative media making and digital sharing as a legitimate and even culturally relevant pastime. David Gauntlett’s Making is Connecting continues that line of thought, but also makes the connection between the more traditionally accepted outlets of creativity – say, knitting or sewing – to the work of a YouTube video maker, a iPhoneographer, and a remix artist. Drawing from decades of existing social science research on the nature of creativity and innovation, philosophical writings on creativity and community, and the usual suspects of current digital culture (Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, etc.) Gauntlett’s aim is to stress the importance of what he calls “everyday creativity” as an individual outlet and the backbone of online and offline community building.

While mentions of YouTube and Wikipedia abound, this really isn’t a book about digital culture. Nor is it a book that explores creativity, innovation, and collaboration from a corporate or business context. Making is Connecting takes a different approach than similar writings that approach these topics by exploring broader concepts of creativity and community in the first couple of chapters. Chapter one is almost entirely a survey of sociological and philosophical literature on creativity, and Gauntlett’s personal, informal writing style makes it engaging enough to keep non cultural-studies geeks interested. Gauntlett takes a pre-digital historical perspective, looking at the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800’s and the 1990’s Riot Grrl zine scene, before jumping into digital culture in Chapter Three. Even then, Gauntlett doesn’t bother treading the same ground as, say Here Comes Everybody, and brings his own background as a creator of YouTube videos into the narrative, making it a book that has a lot in common with Jenkins “Acafan” approach to critical studies. The final three chapters of the book link to the previous three by exploring the nature of happiness and community building, how the exploration of everyday creativity lends to them both, and the tools and theoretical frameworks to that make such creativity possible for individuals and groups.

That’s a lot of ground to cover in one 250+ page book, particularly one that eschews the traditional case study model that similar books would use for this topic. Making is Connecting is indeed an ambitious book, but it doesn’t read like one. That’s a compliment. It covers a lot of ground and connects a wide range of disciplines and perspectives but Gauntlett isn’t trying to state a business case but is instead attempting to tie together the popular works of digital theorists with under-recognized works in other, equally important fields. It’s a humanist, holistic approach to digital studies that I hope may inspire other writers to approach such topics in a similar way.

I Read A Book: Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industry

US Patent 4,516,948; Reconfigurable Toy Assembly; Hiroyuki Obara (Yes, this is the Optimus Prime patent!)

By Raizel Liebler

At the point that it seems like everything has been franchised in media, from public domain works like Sherlock Holmes, to Star Wars, to Angry Birds. But the cultural production — and continuity issues involved — are rarely analyzed outside of tight-knit fan communities. Derek Johnson’s Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries helps to show the process by which transmedia empires are created over time.

Johnson writes about several media franchises, including of greatest interest to me — Transformers and the X-Men. And despite the well-known tale of Transformers as another intrusive “made in Japan” product, the truth is much more complex, it is “an intellectual property formed in 1984 formed from a partnership between American and Japanese toymakers, and sustained since through successive reiterations across both markets — demonstrates that franchises are not only replicated products traded between and often imposed on global markets, but formatted processes whereby local franchising has fed back into an evolving transnational system of creative cultural production.” Johnson shows that Transformers is both American and Japanese — and a combination only possible through a cultural mix.

In the chapter about X-Men, Johnson discusses its rising power within the Marvel universe, and how different franchise properties “talk” or do not talk to each other. Johnston very much knows the history and interlocking X-properties — the overwhelming number of sources and canon was something that caused my fandom to wane. Issues involving overlapping interactions are also talked about about the Star Trek universe — and how new Battlestar is similar and dissimilar from the original. The process of world-building in these francises and the lines of communication and canon production are detailed well by Johnson.

Johnson is open about how his examples tend to be male-directed, an acknowledgement that is too rare in detailed examinations of popular culture. The critical analysis you are looking for on the Disney Princesses and My Little Pony isn’t in this book, but we at The Learned Fangirl will continue write about pop culture through the lens of concerns about gender and race/ethnicity!

His understanding of the importance of other franchises makes sense within context within his truly excellent introductory chapter, laying out the predecessors to his own research. As someone who always reads introductions, this is what a dissertation background media studies chapter should look like.

So are there any downsides? His lack of an overview of intellectual property could be excused, except for the mentions of franchising law — from the 1960s. And the mention of the Optimus Prime patent is cute, but shows up without contextualizing the patent in the inventor plus employer-assigned owner model that patent law exists within worldwide. A few footnotes pointing readers without a law-talking background to important sources in trademark and copyright law would help to round out this important discussion. Generally, I really want there to be more discussion between those who look at these issues from different perspectives, such as at MIT8!

Overview: A very well written book on the complex issues involved in franchising media products, especially over long time frames where continuity is important to retain fan loyalty.

I Read A Book: Matt Stahl’s Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work

Matt Stahl’s Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work is an interesting book about the ways recording artists have been treated by California and federal law, especially regarding copyright and employment status.

Skip the first two chapters, and go right to the meaty goodness about how California and the United States in general views recording artists – and the complicated issues about whether they are employees or independent contractors.

This issue is especially important this year — 2013 –  the first year where songwriters and performers can start the termination of copyright grants to publishers and record labels (after 35 years). One of the issues that will be at the forefront of the reversion issue concerns “work-for-hire”, and Stall spends a great deal of time describing the Congressional hearings and related matters that helped to create this issue. The detailed narrative is helpful for anyone interested in the ups-and-downs of the relationship between musicians and business — regardless of whether one agrees with Stall’s overall analysis.

And his analysis is quite biting — describing the music industry as exploiting musicians in whatever way they can, willing to flip the script to serve their purposes, and always willing to complain about how “it used to be better in the old days”:

It is as if, between 1975 to 1985, the pool of capable, charismatic, potentially popular, or otherwise qualified recording artists has mysteriously dried up; it is as if advances and royalty rates have escalated on their own accord, and not (at least in part) as a result of the transformation of a range of business strategies. (130)

His same as it ever was perspective can be disheartening, but it is helpful for recording artists of today to realize that their issues about getting paid what they deserve isn’t new.

Summary: Recommended for those interested in copyright, employment relationships, contracts, music, and labor theory – especially on how these diverse interests interact.

I Read A Book: Laina Dawes’ What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal

Tamar-Kali and her band in Chicago
Tamar-Kali and her band in Chicago

-By Raizel Liebler

If you are a fan, you should read Laina Dawes‘ What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Seriously. Yes, if you happen to sit in the middle of the venn diagram of North American, African-descent, female, and fan (or creator) of metal, then this book will likely speak more closely of your own personal experience.

But it is important for fans, consumers, and producers of media more generally to hear about these experiences — about lines of inclusion and exclusion. This book is part of the continued serious discussion about fandom — and I would place it alongside Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal: The Music and the Culture. These were some of the first books that took fandom seriously and showed that fans weren’t mindless Deceptacons, following the lead of big Consumerism (Megatron), but participants in the creation and continuation of culture. Henry Jenkins inspired many, including us to create The Learned Fangirl, and I fully expect What Are You Doing Here? to do the same for future audiences.

Dawes weaves together the disparate threads of perceptions of women of African descent (especially in North America), the history of Black women artists that “rock”, the experiences of fans first finding and engaging with metal, and about the difficulties of staying a metalhead for Black women. This isn’t an academic book — instead it is a work of cultural journalism — but it is smart throughout.

Dawes writes movingly about her fandom and the fandom of other Black women:

Talking to people for the first time about my favorite music, I catch myself preparing for the inevitable. I mentally rehearse my replies before the questions about my musical preference arise. I find the process stressful–and I wonder if I am being paranoid for thinking I will have to defend myself. … Black metalheads, especially black women, can expect to be publicly regarding their behavior, through negative comments, or in some cases, physical harassment. (83, 82)

Despite barriers, the black women that Dawes interviews still forge a connection to the music that speaks to them … and their experiences. She writes about fans who are accepted (except when they are not) and the difficulties of Black female metal musicians, finding the right “niche” in the present music industry.

I especially appreciate the discussions of sexism and racism in metal, including the different ways that Black female metalheads deal with these elements — ranging from limiting their music fandoms to dismissing anything that stands in the way of their love of the music. Dawes spends a large section of one chapter describing the aftermath of one particular example of racism — a statement by Pantera’s Phil Anselmo at a concert in the mid-90s. She describes the impact this had on metal fans, and those that use this statement as a rallying cry. But she also describes how Anselmo decries his past behavior, including but not limited to that statement, but (It is strange however that she doesn’t discuss the sexism that creeped into Pantera’s music at the same time; both negative moves have been later rejected by Anselmo.)

This book also comes at an important time for metal. Despite the stereotype by many that metal is now only the brutal subgenres that are from Scandinavia, much of U.S. metal is being created by bands that include women of people of color — ranging from Metallica & Slayer through Living Colour and Sepultura — and now TV on the Radio, etc.

Too often the only white guy asked “What are you doing here?” is Doctor Who — and he’s fictional (and not human). Privilege allows only a limited group of people to have any musical taste accepted by all — and hopefully this book will be an important step in showing that metal is music for all.

Summary: Metal isn’t music for white dudes  — it is music for all, and Dawes’ book helps to prove it.

For more, TLF has an interview with Dawes here and here is her NPR interview.

(Disclaimer: The other co-founder of TLF, Keidra Chaney, is one of the interviewees cited in the book, including mentions of her important essay in Bitch Magazine — Sister, Outsider, Headbanger.)

I Read A Book: Kal Raustialia and Christopher Sprigman’s The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation

Kal Raustialia and Christopher Sprigman‘s The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation is a truly innovative book, pulling together disparate tales to give an overall picture about the interactivity between creativity, copying, and change. If you are in the IP world, especially copyright and trademark, this is the book to give to your questioning family and friends about what you do is important.

And the interesting readability exists regardless of whether you agree with their overall thesis that to spark creativity, imitation is often required, and the law should accommodate these incremental progressions and copies. Seriously, where else will you in one chapter read about football, fonts (arial v. helvetica), financial services, and … database protection? If you’re not already sold, how about discussions about cooking (including celebrity chefs), high fashion, magicians, and the ethics of comedy writing? And the trademarked drink — the Dark and Stormy? In. One. Book.

Not everyone will be won over by their argument, for example, the small designers on Etsy who come up with creative products and then large companies poach their designs. The book does not discuss Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, and lawsuits involved with fast fashion (see more on this issue from Susan Scafidi on Counterfeit Chic, Jezebel, and the Village Voice), where the knockoffs do not allow for the creativity of the original creator to be acknowledged. (This is not true for high fashion/popular knockoffs — if you are buying a Pippa dress, you are getting it due to the connection to the original).

The general cultural mushing together of our understanding of copyright and plagiarism has allowed for the idea that citation in whatever form means permission must be sought. We all build on the shoulder of the giants that have come before. Thankfully, this book helps to show how the process of using the creative energy of others is important for creativity.

Summary: Read this engaging and informative book. And then buy a copy for your mom.

I Read A Book: Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It

Chicks Dig Time Lords is a breezy, joyous and thoughtful celebration of Doctor Who for new and old fandom stalwarts and even more casual fans who may be interested in a more critical look at the series and the fan communities it inspires. Bridging the gap between personal and scholarly essays, the anthology features contributions from academics, fans, novelists and even a former companion (Ace!)

Hardcore fans may either be bored or delighted by the first few essays that cover similar ground, exploring how many of the writers discovered Doctor Who and became a part of the fan community. For most U.S. fans, it’s some variation of the same story, discovering the old Tom Baker episodes on PBS or coming into the fandom through Russell T. Davies 2005 relaunch. The personal essays that broke from that mold explored the powerful connection that shared fandom can create between family members, such as “Time is Relative,” Carole Barrowman’s essay on her shared lifelong Who fandom with her brother John (yes, *that* John) or Amy Frisch’s “Two Generations of Fangirls in America” who talked about passing down her love of Doctor Who to her daughter.

Being a Doctor Who fan, but not an active fangirl*, I found the essays that focused on fan activity (zines, cons, cosplay, etc.) interesting, but I’m sure a more engaged fan would find these essays to be a highlight. Few fandom-focused books get into the nitty-gritty of fan activity, preferring to not alienate more casual fans with “insider talk” so the benefit of being published by a small niche press is not having to worry about that issue.

The more academically focused essays of the anthology were both my favorite section of the book and the most disappointing: there’s so much to be explored and interrogated in terms of gender (and race, and sexuality, and class and culture) with the show, and the essays would get close, and then end before they got meaty. Case in point, the essay “Martha Jones: Fangirl Blues” presented some provocative thoughts about race on Doctor Who but seemed more like the start of a much longer essay that explored Martha within the context of Who’s whitewashed history and the fandom’s collective response and reaction to issues of race. One essay that got close was “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” which took at hard, hard look at the new series and whether its portrayals of gender and sexuality are as enlightened as some give it credit for.

I don’t think the intent Chicks Dig Time Lords was to be that kind of book, or focus on that kind of writing, however, it’s meant to give a platform to fans across the spectrum who have a lot of insight that may not be covered or respected in more traditional academic cultural studies writing, and I appreciate that.

It has also been interesting and refreshing to observe Doctor Who’s evolution from one of the more obscure (and presumed male-dominated) of sci-fi fandoms in the U.S. to a relatively mainstream fandom that is now often seen as hip and even kind of sexy, particularly with younger female fans coming into the fold. But often these fans are still seen as outliers or interlopers. Small press, fandom-focused books like Chicks Dig Time Lords go a long way in amplifying those once-peripheral fandom voices just a little bit more.

*I’m an old school Who fan, but no fangirl on the level of spending hours actively participating in cons, online communities and such. I am one of THOSE people that watched old school reruns on public TV as a little kid, Tom Baker was my first Doctor and always will be MY Doctor. When I was sick in sixth grade and couldn’t participate in gym for a whole year, I spent Monday mornings talking about episodes with my teacher. I always saw Doctor Who as an exciting escape from my boring childhood world. As I got older, my interests moved on to other things but my affection of Doctor Who always remained, and I would defend it again other geeks who derided the show with the worst insults you could bestow upon a TV show at the time, like “cheesy,” “cheap,” and “British.”

I Read A Book: Madhavi Sunder’s From Goods to A Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice

Book cover includes modded light involved in copyright dispute between copyright owner and artist group that changed light so it would work in places without electricity.

Discourse on intellectual property has often only considered the value of IP from the perspective of law and economics. However, in this book, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice, Madhavi Sunder moves away from this lens, instead focusing on the interaction between intellectual property, cultural production, and human rights. If you aren’t already excited by the potential this book offers you should be — and even more so because it delivers on its promises.

Considering this blog focuses on fandom, I’ll start with the detailed discussions of the discursive value of fandom and reinterpretation. Sunder has an entire chapter on the concept of Mary Sue, which she interprets as an opportunity for those traditionally viewed as readers/viewers to appropriate and adapt culture to respond back to mainstream Western culture. She also spends time analyzing how credit is or is not given to Western and Eastern reinterpretations of earlier works — from the well-known (as least within the fandom community) of The Lion King v. Kimba the White Lion — to the complicated interaction between Bollywood and Hollywood.

But Sunder doesn’t stop there — she argues that culture should be understood as a participatory, living action — including aspects of participation, livelihood, and shared meaning. Her perspective is a broad one, folding patent rights in developing countries and geographic indicators into a reinterpretation of culture and IP:

Culture is not just a set of “inputs” necessary for further innovation. Culture is the sphere in which individuals participate, create, share ideas, and enjoy life with others. Cultural works engender empathy for the other and foster mutual understanding. In short, culture plays a critical–and in the Knowledge Age, an increasingly important–role in promoting freedom in the social, political, and economic spheres of of life. Thus rather than narrowly viewing intellectual property as incentives-for-creation–that is, as merely economic or technology policy–we must understand intellectual property as social and cultural property. (32)

Takeaway: Read alongside Landes and Posner’s The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law to see contrasting views on the role and purpose of intellectual property. Highly recommended.

I Read A Book: Lori Andrews’ I Know Who You Are And I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy

Privacy's Been Dead since at least 1997, since Time Magazine tells me so, but is the real date 1890?

When I first heard about I Know Who You Are And I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, my first thought was … Lori Andrews of biotechnology law fame wrote a sequel to Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer?*

But this book speaks instead to the increasingly tricky situations that online culture places the legal system, businesses that collect personally identifiable information — and more generally how we relate to each other regarding what was viewed at one point as private information. And if you don’t get further than this paragraph, this is one of the best books written about online privacy from a legal perspective for a more general audience that has been published in the last five years.

This book isn’t rah-rah woo-hoo on how fabulous the internetz is, but neither does it view online culture as purely dangerous. The book is based around her idea of a social media constitution, with chapters supporting the need for a right to connect, freedom of speech, privacy of place, and privacy of information. The arguments are clearly laid out, and Andrews explains complex legal arguments, such as the history and present status of the right of privacy, in a way that adds to the understanding of those with a legal background, yet not being confusing for those without.

I appreciate that Andrews also spends time throughout the book discussing the difficulty in analyzing what is personal and what is professional. Her examples will help to broaden our analysis in our upcoming law review article, Be the Brand: Required Involvement in Social Media (very short version here). This has especially become an issue for certain types of government (and related employees), such as teachers and law enforcement types. She also dedicates three chapters to analyzing how difficult it is to draw boundary lines for social media within the judicial process — for parents in custody battles, for judges in “friendship” with attorneys, and for jurors that don’t seem to understand when they are told not to social media, that it means them.

Andrews also discusses the differential in the impact of online harassment and bullying on specific groups, such as kids — because they are more easily influenced by their peers — and women, who take threats of or actual harassment seriously, not as “a harmless prank” as one defendant’s attorney quoted by Andrews’ puts it. While she does write a bit about the Arab spring, I hope to eventually read something that really breaks down why the impact of online negative activities impacts other types of categories of difference — and why the “just put it all out there” style of handling online privacy ignores racism, “slut shaming”, and other negatives.

The one point that the book doesn’t make that I wish it would have is that for companies in the business of data collection, such as Facebook, it isn’t in their their financial interest and thought process to make money to protect their users’ information from being exploited. And that is why the efforts of the FTC under the leadership of Jon Leibowitz to “protect[] consumer privacy in an era of rapid change” is so important.

Takeaway: Likely Andrews’ social media constitution will not be accepted, but it (and this book as a whole) is an important well-reasoned voice in the next steps to balance privacy with rights of expression.

*She did write a series of novels, so this thought isn’t super-weird.

I Read A Book: Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live

This is a very positive book about the Internetz that honors Howard Stern within its title. Perhaps that is all you need to know about Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.

But if not… This is a very, very, very optimistic book on the sharing potentialities on the internet. It is so positive that it is sweeter (saccharine?) than the bowl of porridge Goldilocks wouldn’t eat.  We’ll soon be reviewing two other recent books way, way down the other end of the scale on the dangers of the internetz to balance things out.

But while I was reading this book, I kept thinking — how can this book ignore the negative aspects of online culture — fraud, stalking, the inability to leave one’s past (and past relationships) behind, creation of support structures for severely negative behaviors — surely these would at least be mentioned. Some are, briefly, but in a mildly dismissive way. After describing the least effective way of describing privacy as avoiding things that are “creepy”, he then recommends an “ethic of publicness” that has as part of its first point:

If you have information that could in any way be valuable to others, you must ask yourself: Why not share it?

And there is the creepy! I really do not think that Jarvis’ point was to show all of the privileges in his invisible knapsack, but after seeing and hearing about (and experiencing some of) the horribles that happen to women and people of difference online, his extreme naïveté is bordering on thoughtlessness. I am glad that Jarvis can be positive enough to think that online culture can be super-awesome, but is

what needs to change is not so much our behavior, our rules, or technology but our norms: how we operate as a society and interact with one another[?]

It’s good we live in a world where Jarvis feels comfortable enough sharing his cancer treatment with the world. But there are plenty of people who do not want or seek out that degree of openness — and are hurt with the consequences.

One final note — Jarvis says that when one shares a secret with a friend and it gets out, the problem is with the friend, not the technology. But anyone who has accidentally received a stray text meant for another knows that while people may make mistakes, technology sometimes makes that mistake spread further and remain permanent.

The takeaway: Read this book if you want a well-written cheerleadingly positive view of the internet.

 

 

I Read A Book: Robert Levine’s Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Creative Commons licensed photo of a parasite

The best thing about this book is the title. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to learn about how to stop parasites? Especially when they are digital! But the book offers little more than the simplistic model of payment is good for copyrighted materials – and pirating is bad.

One of the ways that I judge books that talk about culture and copyright is based on how fans and fandom are written about. And this book doesn’t disappoint, by carefully discussing elements of fan culture and their importance to the continued economic success of multiple media properties. I joke. There is no mention of fandom at all, beyond a page-long dismissive mention of the concept of 1,000 true fans, no mention of consumer buy-in, nothing beyond “you parasite.” In a book about digital culture, this is an EPIC fail.

I also judge books in this oeuvre by their description of Nine Inch Nails’ effort to release music via Creative Commons and other more open means, including the Creative Commons-licensed albums The Slip and Ghosts I-IV, and the label-delayed therefore placed online for the free remix album, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (AKA Year Zero Remixed). And lest we forget, Trent Reznor decried his labels at every opportunity, including praising fans for … wait for it, engaging in illegal downloading, Levine’s “parasitic” behavior, extorting them to “steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing.”

But Levine’s description of T. Rez is:

“the acts that have most successfully used free music to promote major tours –Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails—have benefited from millions of dollars’ worth of marketing from their respective major labels.”

What ho, Jeeves.

If you think I’m playing the detail game, Levine calls out William Patry, one of the pre-eminent copyright scholars for getting the sales of Grand Theft Auto wrong, and then intimates that he would not have the viewpoints he does, but for being Google’s attack dog. Correlation does not imply causation – and Patry held the same views before starting his present job. Levine’s anti-scholar bent is not just directed at Patry. One of the most detrimental aspects of this book is the implication throughout that academics (and academic institutions, like Harvard and Stanford; and non-profits, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons) that are not copyright extremists are activists and in the pocket of big companies (read: Google and its ilk). He directly calls Pamela Samuelson an “activist [,] who wanted to weaken copyright in other ways” (26), calls Jessica Litman someone who ignores the law (46), but saves the majority of his directed fury towards academia towards Lawrence Lessig.

There are actual well-reasoned critiques of Lessig’s work – but this isn’t one of them.  And to publish a book in 2011, critiquing Lessig with nary a mention of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, where in 2008 Lessig spends a whole book discussing the ways that remix culture can work with traditional media so everyone makes money, is just intellectually lazy. Or deliberate.

Because I am *that* sort of reader, I checked the acknowledgements, which include mentions of Fred von Lohman, Jane Ginsburg, and Marybeth Peters – all huge figures in the area of digital culture and copyright. Highly surprisingly, there are no quotes in the book from them –  except for a brief snippet of Peters’ congressional testimony in her role as the Register of Copyrights, but nothing from the interviews Levine conducted.

In an odd way, I actually prefer Mark Helprin’s “alone in my room, I reign supreme” copyright-should-last-forever-because-I-am-a-brilliant-author diatribe because he was straightforward about what he wanted. And if you want to read about the dangers of Google, read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything. If you want to read about how the music industry took things in the wrong direction, read Greg Kot’s Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.

Summary: Not recommended. Save the entertainment and publishing industry through paywalls! Google bad!

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