Copyright Class Struggle Creative Economies in a Social Media Age

Earning an income in our time often involves ownership of or control over creative assets. Employing the law and philosophy of economics, this illuminating book explores the legal controversies that emerge when authors, singers, filmmakers, and social media barons leverage their rights into major paydays. It explores how players in the entertainment and technology sectors articulate claims to an ever-increasing amount of copyright-protected media. It then analyzes efforts to reform copyright law, in the contexts of 1) increasing the rights of creators and sellers, and 2) allocating these rights after employment and labor disputes, constitutional challenges to intellectual property law, efforts to legalize online mashups and remixes, and changes to the amount of streaming royalties paid to actors and musicians. This work should be read by anyone interested in how copyright law - and its potential reform - shapes the ownership of ideas in the social media age.

1. On owning ideas in our time; Part I. IP Disparities: 2. Authors as hired hands; 3. Independent invention and its discontents; Part II. IP Liberties: 4. Hollywood's copyright exemptions?; 5. The Beijing consensus; Part III. Pirate's Dilemmas: 6. The inquisitorial internet; 7. Why we can't build universal digital libraries; 8. Conclusion.

Hannibal Travis is Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, where his research focuses on the universal accessibility of digital libraries, the rights of authors and performers to compensation from streaming sites under international and domestic law, privacy and the surveillance of Facebook or YouTube activity, and copyright and patent reform. Previously he practiced technology and entertainment law at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York and at O'Melveny & Myers in San Francisco.