About this item
Today’s copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright—and its violation—a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back three centuries—and their history is essential to understanding today’s battles. The Copyright Wars—the first major trans-Atlantic history of copyright from its origins to today—tells this important story.Peter Baldwin explains why the copyright wars have always been driven by a fundamental tension.
About the Author
Peter Baldwin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS (2005) , Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930 (2005) , and The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875-1975 (2008) .
