Copyright

Copyright law was once an esoteric backwater, the special province of professional authors, publishers, and media companies. This is no longer the case. In the age of social media and cloud storage, we have become a copying and sharing culture. Much of our everyday communication, work, and entertainment now directly involves copyright law. Copyright law and policy are ferociously contested. Record labels, movie studios, book publishers, newspapers, and many authorsrage that those who share music, video, text, and images over the Internet are ¿ealing¿heir property. By contrast, copyright industry critics celebrate digital technology¿potential to make the universe of movies, music, books, and art accessible anytime and anywhere ¿nd to empower individualsthe world over to express themselves by sharing and remixing those works. These critics argue that excessive copyright enforcement threatens that promise and stifles creativity.In Copyright: What Everyone Needs to Know¿, Neil Weinstock Ne