Magick Matters

23.04.2021

“Shamans, Software and Spleens : Law and the Construction of the Information Society” by James Boyle

Magick Matters

"Who owns your genetic information? Might it be the doctors who, in the course of removing your spleen, decode a few cells and turn them into a patented product? In 1990 the Supreme Court of California said yes, marking another milestone on the information superhighway. This extraordinary case is one of the many that James Boyle takes up in Shamans, Software, and Spleens, a timely look at the infinitely tricky problems posed by the information society. Discussing topics ranging from blackmail and insider trading to artificial intelligence (with good-humored stops in microeconomics, intellectual property, and cultural studies along the way), Boyle has produced a work that can fairly be called the first social theory ...>>

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23.04.2021

“Copyright’s Highway: From the Printing Press to the Cloud” by Paul Goldstein (2nd edition)

Magick Matters

"In Copyright's Highway, one of the nation's leading authorities on intellectual property law offers an engaging, readable, and intelligent analysis of the effect of copyright on American politics, economy, and culture. From eighteenth-century copyright law, to the "celestial jukebox," to the future of copyright issues in the digital age, Paul Goldstein presents a thorough examination of the challenges facing copyright owners and users. In this fully updated second edition, the author expands the discussion to cover the latest developments and shifts in copyright law for a new audience of scholars and students. This expanded edition introduces readers to present and future debates regarding copyright law and policy, including a new chapter on the technological ...>>

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23.04.2021

“The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry’s War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties” by Aram Sinnreich

Magick Matters

The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry's War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties the decade and a half since Napster first emerged, forever changing the face of digital culture, the claim that "internet pirates killed the music industry" has become so ubiquitous that it is treated as common knowledge. Piracy is a scourge on legitimate businesses and hard-working artists, we are told, a "cybercrime" similar to identity fraud or even terrorism. In The Piracy Crusade, Aram Sinnreich critiques the notion of "piracy" as a myth perpetuated by today's cultural cartels―the handful of companies that dominate the film, software, and especially music industries. As digital networks have permeated our social environment, they have ...>>

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23.04.2021

“Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates” by Adrian Johns

Magick Matters

"Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized—one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood. Piracy explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Brimming with broader ...>>

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22.04.2021

“21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000” edited by Danel Olson

Magick Matters

"Selected by a poll of more than 180 Gothic specialists, the works described and evaluated in 21st CENTURY GOTHIC represent the most impressive Gothic novels and novellas written around the world between the years 2000-2010. Contributors of the fifty-three all-new essays include award-winning novelists, playwrights, biographers, editors, psychoanalysts, forensic psychologists, criminologists, film scholars, humanities librarians, and many of the most influential neo-Gothic literary critics of the last thirty years. Designed for the Gothic fan, student, and critic alike, this massive guide also includes a perceptive foreword by Horror scholar S.T. Joshi and an equally compelling introduction by Gothic anthologist Danel Olson. Small B&W reproductions of the novels' dust jackets preface each long original essay (often ...>>

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