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north-south issues

The debate about 'North-South' issues for many encapsulates tensions in thinking about copyright, digital or otherwise. Who benefits from copyright? For how long? And how? Is copyright the cutting edge of "information colonialism" within advanced economies and within the third world?

Ronald Bettig, in Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property (Boulder, Westview 96) and Peter Drahos, in the challenging A Philosophy of Intellectual Property (Aldershot, Dartmouth 96), provide a view from the left to complement Michael Ryan's Knowledge Diplomacy: Global Competition & the Politics of Intellectual Property (Washington,  Brookings 98) and Bruce Doern's Global Change &  Intellectual Property Agencies: An Institutional Perspective (London, Pinter 99). 

Drahos' collection Intellectual Property: Essays in Law & Legal Theory (Aldershot, Ashgate 99) can be read in conjunction with the less demanding Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal & International Dilemmas (Totowa, Rowman & Littlefield 97) edited by Adam Moore.

Admirers of Drahos may enjoy David Koepsell's The Ontology of Cyberspace: Philosophy, Law & the Future of Intellectual Property (Chicago, Open Court 00). In contrast Brian Martin's "information liberationist" polemic merely appears naive.  

Susan Sell's Power & Ideas: North-South Politics of Intellectual Property & Antitrust (Albany, State Uni of New York Press 98) echoes Bettig. Intellectual Property Rights In The Global Economy (Washington, Institute for International Economics 00) by Keith Maskus takes a dissenting view.

Deborah Halbert's Intellectual Property In The Information Age: The Politics of Expanding Ownership Rights (Westport, Quorum 99) unfortunately covers copyright rather than IP as a whole and largely echoes Drahos and Bettig. Her dissertation Weaving Webs of Ownership: Intellectual Property in an Information Age is online.

Seth Shulman's Owning The Future: Inside the Battle To Control the New Assets That Make Up the Lifeblood of the New Economy (Boston, Houghton Mifflin 99) and E.Con: How The Internet Undermines Democracy (Toronto, Stoddart 99) by Donald Gutstein are arguments against privatization of the IP 'commons' from a US and Canadian perspective. Shrill but thought provoking.

Carlos Correa's Intellectual Property Rights, the WTO & Developing Countries: The TRIPS Agreement & Policy Options (London, Zed 00) is another view of intellectual property as information colonialism, in line with John Tomlinson's Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni Press 91) and the essays in Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation (New Brunswick, Rutgers Uni Press 97) edited by Bruce Ziff & Pratima Rao.

There's more value in Edgardo Buscaglia's US Foreign Policy & Intellectual Property Rights in Latin America (Stanford, Hoover Institution 97), William Alford's sparkling To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilisation (Stanford, Stanford Uni Press 95) and Peter Yu's 2001 paper From Pirates to Partners: Protecting Intellectual Property in the 21st Century.
Christopher Arup's The New World Trade Organization Agreements: Globalizing Law Through Services & Intellectual Property (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 00) is also of interest in understanding international dynamics.


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