Copyright

One of the writers on technology and society who most interests me is Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media studies person at NYU. His books are Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library. The first is a history of American copyright in which Vaidhyanathan argues that weaker copyright models envisioned as providing temporary monopoly as an incentive are better in a variety of ways that the propertarian models that we've gradually adopted. He's particularly interested in the role of P2P, DRM, and such initialisms in contemporary debates about copyright. The other book is a bit chaotic and poorly titled, but a really interesting application of ideas from political theory to copyright issues.

Hadn't seen that one, sounds interesting. Cory Doctorow writers about that sort of thing.

Eric Flint also has some good essays on that - six so far in Jim Baen's Universe and I think most of them are available to the public?

http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/principle

oh! an old message i just now saw. I'm excited that I just got a book by Ronan Deazley on the history of copyright (On the Origin of the Right to Copy -- not sure why Deazley's touchstone won't work). It was recommended by Bill Patry on his blog (before he went to Google) ... If you like detailed discussions of various tiny doctrines and nuances in copyright law, the Patry Copyright blog is great. Also I believe he's coming out with his own treatise or handbook soon.