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background: concepts, history, significance Intellectual property is the 'property of the mind', traditionally characterised as copyright and as 'industrial property' (patents, trademarks, designs). It is increasingly contentious. This page offers background information. There's a separate multi-part profile on the 'copyright debate', something that's generally created more heat than light.       not dead, just smells that way?  Paul Goldstein's Copyright's Highway: The Law & Lore of Copyright from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox (New York, Hill & Wang 94) provides a short and easily digested introduction to copyright as law, philosophy and practice from the US perspective.  Lawrence Lessig, the Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law, is a leading proponent of the view that emerging technologies mean that the protection of IP in the virtual world may be stronger than offline.  So much for the mantra that if it's not dead, it certainly smells that way. His Code & Other Laws Of Cyberspace (New York, Basic Books 99) is an elegant exposition of his concerns. There's a companion site. Pamela Samuelson's 1991 paper on Digital Media & the Law in the 1991 Communications of the ACM and her more recent article, in the 1999 California Law Review, on Intellectual Property & Contract Law For The Information Age complement Lessig and Goldstein. Among other publications she critiqued US proposals for what became the DCMA in The Copyright Grab, a characteristically biting article in January 1996.  Jessica Litman's 1996 Oregon Law Review paper on Revising Copyright Law For The Information Age, arguing that digital technology has made 'reproduction' untenable as a basis for copyright law .... but the corpse refuses to die.      historical perspectives  There is, alas, no authoritative history of copyright in Australia or at a global level. Benjamin Kaplan's An Unhurried View of Copyright (New York, Columbia Uni Press 1968) is a succinct history of US copyright law. Lyman Patterson's Copyright In Historical Perspective (Nashville, Vanderbilt Uni Press) has a wider scope. Hillel Schwartz's The Culture of the Copy (Zone, New York 1996) explores western ideas about originality, value and authenticity.  Despite the title, William Alford's To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilisation (Stanford, Stanford Uni Press 95) offers valuable insights into both western and eastern perceptions of creativity, the marketplace and intellectual property law.   The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 00) by Brad Sherman & Lionel Bently concentrates on the UK and the US in the period before 1900. It is a detailed but engaging study of why IP law, particularly copyright, is so complex and why a systematic improvement seems unlikely.   It complements the elegant Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 93) by Mark Rose and The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature (Durham, Duke Uni Press 94), a collection of essays on copyright theory, broadcasting, piracy, contracts, music sampling and other matters, edited by Martha Woodmansee & Peter Jaszi. Jane Gaines' Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law (Chapel Hill, Uni of North Carolina Press 91) is also valuable. Sherman, with Alain Strowel, had earlier edited a set of essays on theory and practice in Of Authors & Origins: Essays in Copyright Law (Oxford, Clarendon Press 94), and co-edited From Berne To Geneva: Recent Developments In International Copyright & Neighbouring Rights, papers from the 1997 by the Australian Key Centre for Cultural & Media Policy at Griffith University. For the early modern period many studies of print and culture embrace the emergence of the rights of authors, printers and publishers. Apart from Elizabeth Eisenstein's landmark two volume work The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformation in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 79) we recommend Adrian Johns' The Nature Of The Book: Print & Knowledge In The Making (Chicago, Uni of Chicago Press 98).  Among studies of authors and the fight for copyright Pegasus In Harness: Victorian Publishing & W M Thackeray (Charlottesville, Uni Press of Virginia 91) by leading US editor Peter Shillingsburg, Aubert Clark's The Movement for International Copyright in 19th Century America (Westport, Greenwood 73) and Simon Novell-Smith's International Copyright Law & the Publisher in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Oxford, Clarendon Press 68) are particularly illuminating.       economic significance The Australian Copyright Council published Hans Guldberg's valuable Copyright: An Economic Perspective. It highlights the role of copyright-related industries in Australia's GDP and for example notes that those industries are growing at 1.5 times the rate of the total economy.  The International Intellectual Property Alliance's 2000 report (PDF) on the significance of copyright for the US economy paints a similar picture, in line with findings in The Economic Impact Of Knowledge (Boston, Butterworth 98) edited by Dale Neef and writing about the information economy highlighted in other guides on this site.  We've explored some of those studies in our profile on copyright myths.  The Fair Use page of this guide highlights studies of the balance between incentives for copyright creators (and investors) and the needs or rights of consumers.     next page  (Australian law)