CFP: Intellectual Property and Its Discontents (3/30/04; MLA)
Proposed Special Session for the MLA 2004 in Philadelphia, Dec. 27-30,
2004.
This panel seeks papers that examine the nature of copyright and
intellectual property. In the last twenty years, the claims and boundaries
of intellectual property, especially copyright, have come under pressure
from several directions, including legal, commercial, theoretical. As
well, the scope of what counts as intellectual property (and what is thus,
one way or another, copyrightable or patentable) has vastly expanded, from
a farmer’s grains to, effectively, a person’s genes and life story.
Further, just as the domain of intellectual property has grown, so has the
challenge to its liberal claims. In the last ten years, copy technology
and the Internet have irrevocably changed the force of copyright and
intellectual property. The changes go well beyond the anxiety faced by
those wanting to photocopy a book (or sections of it) for a class. They
more deeply extend to the creation and distribution via the Internet of
software programs, music, videos, etc.—essentially all matter that can be
represented in digital form (an increasingly large field).
Papers that touch on these issues in any interesting way are welcome, and
the hope is that a range of perspectives can be included. I am however
especially interested in these areas:
* Theoretical examinations of what counts as intellectual property
* Geo-political Examinations of Open Source/Free Software
* Historical comparisons
Please send a 250-wd abstract by email not later than 30 March 2004 to
Louis Suarez-Potts at luispo@mac.com .
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