Academic Writing

A History of Aesthetics from Homer to Digital Mash-ups: Cumulative Creativity and the Demise of Copyright Exclusivity

Author(s): 
Giancarlo Frosio
Publication Date: 
October 28, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing

Under a regime of limited economic incentive for creativity and confined commodification of information, humanity produced the greatest portion of human knowledge. To mention some, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Mahābhārata, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Scandinavian Sagas, the German Lay of the Nibelungs, the Celtic legends of Arthur, the Romances and Chanson De Geste all came to life well before strong economic rights were attached to creativity. Read more » about A History of Aesthetics from Homer to Digital Mash-ups: Cumulative Creativity and the Demise of Copyright Exclusivity

Users' Patronage: The Return of the Gift in the "Crowd Society"

Author(s): 
Giancarlo Frosio
Publication Date: 
September 10, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing
Read more » about Users' Patronage: The Return of the Gift in the "Crowd Society"
In this work, I discuss the tension between gift and market economy throughout the history of creativity. For millennia, the production of creative artifacts has lain at the intersection between gift and market economy. From the time of Pindar and Simonides – and until the Romanticism will commence a process leading to the complete commodification of creative artifacts – market exchange models run parallel to gift exchange. From Roman amicitia to the medieval and Renaissance belief that “scientia donum dei est, unde vendi non potest,” creativity has been repeatedly construed as a gift.

Privacy and Markets: A Love Story

Author(s): 
Ryan Calo
Publication Date: 
August 6, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing
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Abstract:      

Law and economics tends to be skeptical of privacy, finding privacy overrated, inefficient, and perhaps even immoral. Law should not protect privacy because privacy inhibits the market by allowing people to hide useful information. 

Privacy law scholars tend to be skeptical of markets. Markets “unravel” privacy by penalizing consumers who prefer it, degrade privacy by treating it as just another commodity to be traded, and otherwise interfere with the values or processes that privacy exists to preserve.

Bait, Mask, and Ruse

Author(s): 
Elizabeth Joh
Publication Date: 
April 10, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing

Deception and enticement have long been tools of the police, but new technologies have enabled investigative deceit to become more powerful and pervasive. Most of the attention given to today’s advances in police technology tends to focus either on online government surveillance1 or on the use of algorithms for predictive policing or threat assessment.2 No less important but less well known, however, are the enhanced capacities of the police to bait, lure, and dissemble in order to investigate crime. What are these new deceptive capabilities, and what is their importance? Read more » about Bait, Mask, and Ruse

Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Author(s): 
Neil Richards
Publication Date: 
January 22, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing

Abstract:

Most people believe that privacy and free speech are always at odds. People all over the world have struggled with how to reconcile the problems of media gossip with our commitment to free and open public debate for over a century. The rise of the Internet has made this problem more urgent. We live in an age of corporate and government surveillance of our lives. And our free speech culture has created an anything-goes environment on the web, where offensive and hurtful speech about others is rife. Read more » about Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

New Republican Bill Is Network Neutrality in Name Only

Author(s): 
Barbara van Schewick
Morgan Weiland
Publication Date: 
January 20, 2015
Publication Type: 
Academic Writing

After a year of debates and a month before the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC’s) rulemaking on network neutrality, the GOP has finally joined the party. Through a draft bill released late last week, congressional Republicans have taken a step in the direction of supporting network neutrality. That’s a good thing, and moves them closer to the existing consensus. Roughly four million Americans submitted comments to the FCC calling for real network neutrality rules over the past year, and polls show that both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly support a ban on fast lanes. Read more » about New Republican Bill Is Network Neutrality in Name Only

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