Intellectual Property Books

Contrary to other opinion, this is a very fine book and a must read for educators at any level. Intellectual property is not and can not now be absolutely defined, but as teachers, we have to open the discussion, and here is where that discussion begins.

What we perceive as "plagiarism" has complex definitions and even more complex motivations. This book honors the complexity. It's really very easy to pronounce that "students cheat." However, when their own instructors model the same behavior that their students are penalized for, the issue becomes a whole lot less simplistic.

For instance, I have taught at the university level for many years. I have regularly had my instructional materials "borrowed" without my authorization by other instructors in our program (and other universities). I've never complained to administration. Why would I? The materials serve.

As a kind of "in" joke, however, I started inserting a tiny stylized image into the corner of my handouts, in part so my students would recognize the originator. We all got a kick.

To this day, I will see new teachers (and veterans) in the mailroom, whiting out or otherwise eliminating my stylized image so that they can present my materials as their own. When I mention this to my freshman students, they respond: "If we did that, we'd get thrown out of school!"

And to complicate matters, how much of the wisdom in "my" materials was picked up at faculty meetings, grading sessions, talks over dinner, phone calls?

"Plagiarism" isn't as simple an idea as we might suspect.

I will tell you that I have taught with both the editors over the years. You might imagine that this colors my judgment, but it doesn't, really , except that I have first-hand observations that testify to the fact that these two scholars are exceptional educators who know how the classroom works and understand not just the theory but the practice of composition.

I would urge anyone teaching writing to get this book and consider the thoughtful selections within. Not seriously pondering the issues raised here, I believe, would be pretty lame, given the challenges we face in dealing with the appropriation and citation of text as we enter an era of nearly limitless communication.

Not to discount the years of intellectual effort which have gone into this work, but I just could't help thinking after my first read through, "What a load of rubbish and a complete waste of time and money! ! !" I'll say right up front that "Yes, I have written a book on plagiarizm myself. Quite true. But this has not colored my assessment of Perspectives on Plagiarism." I guess I'm just reacting to the overly (pseudo-??)academic/scholarly jargon which permeates much of the work.

The problem with most academics, including most [but not all] of the contributing authors to the work, is that they are so attached to their pet theories and intellectualizing that they can't escape from the intellectual masturb*&*%#$ a la Foucault, Barthes and others in the same critical tradition. This is evident in the wide-ranging discussions of authorship, postmodernism, and the "remains of the author".

For the solely academic and intellectual I suppose there might be some enjoyment in these Perspectives on Plagiarism, but I myself found them quite dry, unstimulating, and on the whole irrelevant to what's really happening on university campuses today other than the discussions in Part II: Applications in which there were some useful info on Writing Center operations.

As most of the so called GenX knows though, the real writing centers are in Cyberspace, on the Internet where downloading of papers has been commonplace since the mid-1990s. Nowadays, cheatsites have been revamped to write papers on any topic, any timeframe (overnight specials!), according to a student's needs.

I wish I hadn't wasted my $$$ on this book as a student researching the topic for a paper some time ago. Wanna buy it cheap? $5 and it's yours. Just send me an email.

For a better, eminently intellectual read on the topic, I'd recommend Sean Burke's The Death and Return of the Author. Wow! This guy demolishes the Foucault/Barth assertion that the Author is dead. Instead, the Author seems rather to be making a "sly and spectral return". So much for the Frenchies and their pet theories. The Author ain't dead like they thought. Barthes and Foucault are quite dead at this point, the first run down by a laundry truck in Paris, the second succumbing to AIDS in the 1980s. But the Author is still quite alive contrary to Barthes, Foucault and other views in the "Death of the Author" intellectual masturb*&*%#$ camp.

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Dr. Herbert Ulysses Quickwit
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This book dares to ask why the developing world should agree to economic colonialization via an intellectual property regime they had no part in making. Highly recommended.

Two quotes from the book: "Patents reflect human arrogance ..." and "Patents also reflect the arrogance of western civilization ...". These two sweeping generalities are unjustifiable and inexplicable yet they are the basis for the book. This book is of no use to anyone who understands intellectual property, patents, copyrights, trade secrets or other forms of original creation deserving of legal protection.

I used this casebook for my Computer Law class in 1996, and even then we had tons of supplements because of the rapidly evolving law with the growth of the internet. Still, the text is a good starting place for examining intellectual property rights associated with computers and software, privacy, and anti-trust concerns. Can a second edition be too far behind?

It is not easy to understand. It deals with much more international stuff than is practical. Its a reasonable book but not what is sounds like

Though it looks like a thorough work, it contains long-long paragraphs that are almost verbatim, but uncredited copies from works written by other scholars, most notably by William Alford. Ironic, albeit unintended demonstration of how copyright can be abused by plagiarists.

The text of the code is all there and searchable. It has not been edited or optimized for Kindle use however, so there is no clickable table of contents or internal hyperlinks when other provisions are cross referenced. Nor is there any annotation or legislative history. So it's handy if you want to be able to carry the entire code around with you, and you can create your own index of links by investing time in highlighting, but nothing has been done to make this user friendly.

Knowing nothing about copyright law, this Examples & Explanations was useful in showing me the "bigger picture." The book is divided into four sections: copyrightable subject matter, ownership and transactions, statutory rights, and copyright litigation. It highlights major sources of conflict, like the exceptions to Section 106 rights, but gives only 20 pages to fair use. There is a little coverage of the DMCA and new technologies but not as much as I had hoped for.
Perhaps my biggest criticism is that the book just does not offer what other books in this series have: there are very few case references and there are many more examples than there are pages devoted to explanatory material.
Overall, good for a novice, or someone that missed major portions of class all semester.

A very thoughtful reference work. The country-by-country profiles in the second part of this work are particularly useful. Overall well balanced, but notable for a few of its omissions, including The Patent & License Exchange (pl-x) itself!

Dikotter gives an interesting and detailed description of racial views from the earliest of China's interactions with a variety of ethnic groups. Unfortunately, he fails to continue his systematic approach throughout the book and by the end just reveals facts. The work is still of great value dispite any faults because it sheds light on a rarely researched but important topic for anyone interested in a fresh perspective to Chinese history.

This is a nice, clear and rather complete book. Coming from the "patent establishment", it obviously does not address very well the enormous abuses of the patent system, nor the easy and superficial way in which many patents (evergreening or not) are granted.