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Kembrew McLeodFreedom of Expression

In 1998, university professor and professional prankster Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression" as a joke, an amusing if dark way to comment on how intellectual property law is increasingly being used to fence off the culture and restrict the way we're allowed to express ideas. But what's happened in recent years to intellectual property law is no joke and has had repercussions on our culture and our everyday lives. The trend toward privatization of everything--melodies, genes, public space, English language--means an inevitable clash of economic values against the value of free speech, creativity, and shared resources. In "Freedom of Expression," Kembrew McLeod covers topics as diverse as hip-hop music and digital sampling, the patenting of seeds and human genes, folk and blues music, visual collage art, electronic voting, the Internet, and computer software. In doing so, he connects this rapidly accelerating push to pin down everything as a piece of private property to its effects on music, art, and science.

In much the same way that Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" tied together disparate topics through the narrative thread of the fast food business, and written in a witty style that brings to mind media pranksters like Al Franken, Ken Kesey, and Abbie Hoffman, "Freedom of Expression" uses intellectual property law as the focal point to show how economic concerns are seriously eroding creativity and free speech.


This item is part of the collection: Ourmedia

Mediatype: Text
Resource: Text
Creator: Kembrew McLeod
Unique_identifier: ISBN: 0385513259
Is_fiction: False
Mature_content: False
Text_form: Non-fiction book
Suitable_ages: 9-11
Suitable_ages: 12-14
Suitable_ages: 15-17
Suitable_ages: 18+
Other_copyright_holders: False
More_info: http://www.kembrew.com/books/index.html
Format: Text
Language_used: English
Publisher: Doubleday
Is_nonfiction: True
Nonfiction_genre: Law
Nonfiction_genre: Media
Purchase_info: Available at all major bookstores.
Reviews: Much of our cultural heritage, the author reminds us, has been the result of artistic exchange (i.e., borrowing): blues, folk music, painting, collage, architecture, verbal imagery, all have benefited from the hijackings of, among others, T.S. Eliot, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Marianne Moore, the Dadaists, the Situationists, and digital samplers. -- Kirkus Reviews McLeod, a University of Iowa communications professor, charts the effects of the intense commercialization of intellectual property from cultural, legal and technological perspectives, asserting that the current environment handcuffs creators who used to be encouraged to build on past creations. Now, the author posits, potential creators "engage in self-censorship" out of fear of copyright or trademark infringement lawsuits, pushing culture toward a weak, commercial center of creativity. -- Publisher's Weekly
Licenseurl: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Date_created: February 14, 2005
Intended_purpose: commercial
Intended_purpose: educational
Intended_purpose: political
Publicdate: 2005-03-16 17:37:19
Keywords: free speech; copyright; intellectual property; Kembrew McLeod

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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384 pages.