Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs

Author:   David Bellos ,  Alexandre Montagu
Publisher:   Headline Publishing Group
Edition:   UK Airports
ISBN:  

9781800699144


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   18 January 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs


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Full Product Details

Author:   David Bellos ,  Alexandre Montagu
Publisher:   Headline Publishing Group
Imprint:   Mountain Leopard Press
Edition:   UK Airports
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.40cm , Length: 23.20cm
Weight:   0.460kg
ISBN:  

9781800699144


ISBN 10:   180069914
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   18 January 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Reviews

"Fascinating ... Bellos and Montagu have extracted an enormous amount of fun out of their subject, and have sauced their sardonic and playful prose with buckets full of meticulously argued bile -- Simon Ings * The Telegraph * David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu's surprisingly sprightly history ""Who Owns This Sentence?"" arrives with uncanny timing ... The authors' chapters are short but their reach, like the arm of the law itself, is long. -- Alexandra Jacobs * New York Times * A fascinating new look at the patchwork chaos called copyright ... Not just authors, but artists in many media, scientists, mathematicians and every one of us with our own unique individual faces .... should read this book -- Anne Margaret Daniel * Spectator * Lively, opinionated, and ultra-timely -- Louis Menand * New Yorker * From the British Statute of Anne in 1710, which granted meagre rights to authors but more to publishers, to those looming AI battles on IP's ""haziest frontier"", the book maps the ever expanding empire of copyright ... [a] robust and readable polemic history -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times * The field of copyright has been full of dramatic turns ... Mr Bellos and Mr Montagu argue that copyright has gone from a right that favours creators to something more akin to a privilege for the rich and powerful. * Economist * David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu explain how copyright became an invisible economic architecture that governs not just vital matters such as royalties, but also ephemera such as commercial trademarks and medical patents ... As this thoughtful book shows, copyright law has been revised and rewritten according to changing needs -- Dominic Green * Wall Street Journal * An astute survey of ever-evolving proprietorship laws ... a surprisingly accessible recounting of the major twists and turns - and there are many! - surrounding this topic -- Mariko Hewer * Washington Independent Review of Books * A gimlet-eyed analysis of a system that protects a corporate status quo at the expense of independent invention * Kirkus Reviews * A gripping detective story, a flamboyant intellectual history, and a passionate manifesto for creative freedom ... You'll never think about copyright in the same way again * Fara Dabhoiwala, historian and senior research scholar, Princeton University * One good life option is to just read everything David Bellos has ever written * Guardian * Bellos and Montagu reveal the patchwork of laws, norms, and assumptions that have transformed ideas into property. Copyright is no longer just about authors and the right to benefit from their work, but about big business and even bigger profits. Theirs is a compelling call to address the privatization of the global imagination * Emily Drabinski, President, American Library Association * In this madcap history from Plato to Donald Duck, from feudal Europe to Facebook, David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu have written the definitive account of where copyright came from and why it looks the way it does. Who Owns This Sentence? belongs on the bookshelf of every creator, producer, policymaker, and consumer * Jason Mazzone, Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, University of Illinois * We often think of copyright as a form of justice, a means of ensuring that creators rather than pirates of works receive whatever compensation is on offer. This witty, informed and timely book urgently invites us to think otherwise. Copyright, the authors tell us, 'means more than it ever did before.' It takes in books, films, sheet music, computer programs and many other inventions, and yet it in the end 'it is an edifice of words.' This detailed history makes very lively reading, and also encourages action, since we could, if we wished, use different words * Michael Wood, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, Princeton University * The story of copyright has many moving parts: history, literature, economics, politics, policy, and technology. Each element gets a closeup in this expertly told story of the evolution of copyright. In a time when billions of words are used to train AI models, this engaging and instructive book tells how different eras and countries have struggled with the challenge of defining ownership of texts * James T. Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication, Stanford University * Copyright is often defended as an immutable concept handed down through the generations, but this brisk and entertaining history outlines the truth of its complicated history, and illuminates the ways in which it has increasingly been weaponized by contemporary corporations. A gem of narrative nonfiction with wide appeal, bound to be especially savored by anyone with a stake in the future of intellectual property * Stephanie Anderson, LibraryReads Board Member *"


'One good life option is to just read everything David Bellos has ever written' -- Peter Salmon, Guardian


"Fascinating ... Bellos and Montagu have extracted an enormous amount of fun out of their subject, and have sauced their sardonic and playful prose with buckets full of meticulously argued bile -- Simon Ings * The Telegraph * Lively, opinionated, and ultra-timely -- Louis Menand * New Yorker * From the British Statute of Anne in 1710, which granted meagre rights to authors but more to publishers, to those looming AI battles on IP's ""haziest frontier"", the book maps the ever expanding empire of copyright ... [a] robust and readable polemic history -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times * A gimlet-eyed analysis of a system that protects a corporate status quo at the expense of independent invention * Kirkus Reviews * A gripping detective story, a flamboyant intellectual history, and a passionate manifesto for creative freedom ... You'll never think about copyright in the same way again * Fara Dabhoiwala, historian and senior research scholar, Princeton University * One good life option is to just read everything David Bellos has ever written * Guardian * Bellos and Montagu reveal the patchwork of laws, norms, and assumptions that have transformed ideas into property. Copyright is no longer just about authors and the right to benefit from their work, but about big business and even bigger profits. Theirs is a compelling call to address the privatization of the global imagination * Emily Drabinski, President, American Library Association * In this madcap history from Plato to Donald Duck, from feudal Europe to Facebook, David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu have written the definitive account of where copyright came from and why it looks the way it does. Who Owns This Sentence? belongs on the bookshelf of every creator, producer, policymaker, and consumer * Jason Mazzone, Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law, University of Illinois * We often think of copyright as a form of justice, a means of ensuring that creators rather than pirates of works receive whatever compensation is on offer. This witty, informed and timely book urgently invites us to think otherwise. Copyright, the authors tell us, 'means more than it ever did before.' It takes in books, films, sheet music, computer programs and many other inventions, and yet it in the end 'it is an edifice of words.' This detailed history makes very lively reading, and also encourages action, since we could, if we wished, use different words The story of copyright has many moving parts: history, literature, economics, politics, policy, and technology. Each element gets a closeup in this expertly told story of the evolution of copyright. In a time when billions of words are used to train AI models, this engaging and instructive book tells how different eras and countries have struggled with the challenge of defining ownership of texts Copyright is often defended as an immutable concept handed down through the generations, but this brisk and entertaining history outlines the truth of its complicated history, and illuminates the ways in which it has increasingly been weaponized by contemporary corporations. A gem of narrative nonfiction with wide appeal, bound to be especially savored by anyone with a stake in the future of intellectual property -- Stephanie Anderson, LibraryReads Board Member"


A gimlet-eyed analysis of a system that protects a corporate status quo at the expense of independent invention * Kirkus Reviews * A gripping detective story, a flamboyant intellectual history, and a passionate manifesto for creative freedom ... You'll never think about copyright in the same way again One good life option is to just read everything David Bellos has ever written * Guardian * Bellos and Montagu reveal the patchwork of laws, norms, and assumptions that have transformed ideas into property. Copyright is no longer just about authors and the right to benefit from their work, but about big business and even bigger profits. Theirs is a compelling call to address the privatization of the global imagination In this madcap history from Plato to Donald Duck, from feudal Europe to Facebook, David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu have written the definitive account of where copyright came from and why it looks the way it does. Who Owns This Sentence? belongs on the bookshelf of every creator, producer, policymaker, and consumer We often think of copyright as a form of justice, a means of ensuring that creators rather than pirates of works receive whatever compensation is on offer. This witty, informed and timely book urgently invites us to think otherwise. Copyright, the authors tell us, 'means more than it ever did before.' It takes in books, films, sheet music, computer programs and many other inventions, and yet it in the end 'it is an edifice of words.' This detailed history makes very lively reading, and also encourages action, since we could, if we wished, use different words The story of copyright has many moving parts: history, literature, economics, politics, policy, and technology. Each element gets a closeup in this expertly told story of the evolution of copyright. In a time when billions of words are used to train AI models, this engaging and instructive book tells how different eras and countries have struggled with the challenge of defining ownership of texts Copyright is often defended as an immutable concept handed down through the generations, but this brisk and entertaining history outlines the truth of its complicated history, and illuminates the ways in which it has increasingly been weaponized by contemporary corporations. A gem of narrative nonfiction with wide appeal, bound to be especially savored by anyone with a stake in the future of intellectual property -- Stephanie Anderson, LibraryReads Board Member


Author Information

David Bellos is a writer, translator and the Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything has been translated into many languages, including Japanese and Farsi. He has won the IBM-France Translation Prize and the Goncourt Prize for Biography. Alexandre Montagu is a practising lawyer and the founding partner of Montagu Law, which focuses on intellectual property law, international commercial transactions and new media commercial and corporate law. He has written many articles as well as two books, Intellectual Property: Money and Power in a New Era and The Riddle of the Sphinx.

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