The Political Economy of Intellectual Property

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Perelman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
The Political

Digital media communication, intellectual property, and the commodification of language

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-266
Author(s):  
Joseph Sung-Yul Park
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
For Profit ◽  
A Site ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Focusing on fansubbing, the production of unauthorized subtitles by fans of audiovisual media content, this paper calls for a more serious sociolinguistic analysis of the political economy of digital media communication. It argues that fansubbing’s contentious position within regimes of intellectual property and copyright makes it a useful context for considering the crucial role of language ideology in global capitalism’s expanding reach over communicative activity. Through a critical analysis of Korean discourses about fansubbing, this paper considers how tensions between competing ideological conceptions of fansub work shed light on the process by which regimes of intellectual property incorporate digital media communication as a site for profit. Based on this analysis, the paper argues for the need to look beyond the affordances of digital media in terms of translingual, hybrid, and creative linguistic form, to extend our investigations towards language ideologies as a constitutive element in the political economy.

scholarly journals Atoms Want to Be Free Too! Expanding the Critique of Intellectual Property to Physical Goods

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Söderberg ◽  
Adel Daoud
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Political ◽  
Information Goods ◽  
Proprietary Software ◽  
Open Hardware ◽  
Hardware Development ◽  
Trade Press ◽  
The Way

“Atoms are the new bits”. That is the latest buzz arising from the Californian trade press. What do we get when this dictum is sampled with the old rallying cry: “Information wants to be free”? We suggest that the predominant, bounded critique of intellectual property is thereby destabilised. Constitutive of that critique was the exceptionality attributed to information goods (bits) vis-a-vis tangible goods (atoms). It was thus intellectual property could be presented as something altogether different from private property. We recognise that this way of framing the issue has had tactical advantages, but contend that it has stood in the way of a deeper understanding of what intellectual property is. When the critique of proprietary software is expanded by an emerging movement for open hardware development, however, the boundary between intellectual property and property as such crumbles. This enables us to renew our critique of the political economy of information.

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