As one of the early Enlightenment philosophers in England, John Locke sought to bring reason and critical intelligence to the discussion of the origins of civil society. Endeavoring to reconstruct the nature and purpose of government, a social contract theory is proposed. The Second Treatise sets forth a detailed discussion of how civil society came to be and the nature of its inception. Locke's discussion of tacit consent, separation of powers, and the right of citizens to revolt against repressive governments, (...) has made The Second Treatise one of the most influential essays in the history of political philosophy. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the scope of copyright and patent law has grown significantly, strengthening property rights, even when such rights seem to infringe upon other, more basic, priorities. This book investigates the ways in which activists, scholars, and communities are resisting the expansion of copyright and patent law in the information age. Debora J. Halbert explores how an alternative framework for understanding intellectual property - including about how we ought to think about the issues, the development of social movements (...) around specific issues, and civil disobedience - has developed. Each chapter in the book discusses how resistance is developing in relation to a particular copyright or patent issue such as: access to patented medication access to copyrighted information and music via the Internet the patenting of genetic material. This controversial book examines the ways in which the idea of intellectual property is being re-thought by the victims of an over-expansive legal system. It will appeal to students and researchers from a range of disciplines, from law and political science to computer science, with an interest in intellectual property. (shrink)

Western attempts to obtain Chinese compliance with intellectual property rights have a long history of failure. Most discussions of the problem focus on either legal comparisons or explanations arising from levels of economic development (based primarily on the example of U.S. disregard for such rights during the 18th and 19th centuries). After decades of heated negotiation, intellectual property rights is still one of the major issues of misunderstanding between the West and the various Chinese political entities. This paper examines the (...) sources of this problem from the standpoint of traditional Chinese social and political philosophy (specifically Neo-Confucianism). It points out that the basic assumptions about the nature of intellectual property, which arose during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, are fundamentally at odds with the traditional Chinese view of the role of intellectuals in society. It suggests that policies which do not take these differences into account, but which attempt to transfer Western legal concepts without the underlying social constructs are responsible for much of the lack of success in the area of intellectual property rights. (shrink)