Intellectual property in the age of new media

'''NB! This is only a development "sandbox"''' - the real course will be located at the Owl Academy.

Main idea - to introduce various models of author motivation and related legal frameworks. A special focus is on the newer alternative ideas to traditional copyright (e.g. Free Software/Open Source, Creative Commons etc).

The Course:

 * 16 weeks (one semester/term) - one 1.5-hour session (lecture or lab) weekly plus independent work.
 * 3.0 Estonian academic credits, 4.0 ECTS credits

Lectures/topics:

 * Intro: the author vs the information society
 * The history and development of copyright
 * The proprietary world: WIPO and its ideas of intellectual property
 * Contracts and licenses
 * The hacker approach: the development of free licenses
 * The Millennium Bug in the WIPO model
 * One Microsoft Way: the world of proprietary software
 * The digital enforcement: DRM and others
 * The uneasy alliance: Free Software vs Open Source
 * The content models: Creative Commons
 * Hybrid approaches
 * What about the future?

Assessment:

 * paper + slides + oral presentation
 * assignments
 * link portfolio (Technorati or similar)
 * blog

Readings:

 * Barlow, J. P. (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
 * George, J.F. (2003) Computers in Society: Privacy, Ethics and the Internet. Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey
 * Jacob, R., Alexander, D., Lane, L. (2004) A Guidebook to Intellectual Property. Patents, Trade Marks, Copyright and Designs. Sweet & Maxwell.
 * Himanen, P. (2004) Challenges of the Global Information Society. report for the Committee for the Future in Parliament of Finland.
 * Himanen, P. (2001) Hacker Ethic. Random House
 * Himanen, P. (2002) Häkkerieetika ja informatsiooniajastu vaim. Kunst, Tallinn (Estonian translation of Hacker Ethic)
 * Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. The Penguin Press.
 * Martin, B. (1998) Information Liberation: Challenging the Corruptions of Information Power. Freedom Press, London.
 * Stallman, R. (2002). Free Software, Free Society. Ed. Joshua Gay. GNU Press
 * Wynants, M., Cornelis, J., eds (2005) How Open is the Future? Economic, Social and Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free & Open-Source Sofware. CrossTalks, VUB Brussels University Press 2005.