Prof may go to jail for popularizing philosophical works

Major controversy has erupted after the French and Argentinian governments went after a philosophy professor for popularizing Spanish translations of philosophical texts. Prof. Horacio Potel is accused of violating “intellectual property rights” and faces a prison term of one month to six years. Much of the discussion is in Spanish and therefore inaccessible to the [...]

Guess who was the world’s top pirate of intellectual property in the 18th and 19th centuries

[This piece appears as Chapter 3 of my book Towards a Political Economy of Information, published in 2004. I am posting it here because of current efforts by the U.S. and other advanced countries to tighten even further what is already a very strict global intellectual property protectionist regime.]

U.S. piracy in the 19th century

Nineteenth century [...]

The piracy of intellectuals

Computers need computer programs to run them. In recent years, computers have become more affordable. As a result, a local market for copies of computer programs is thriving.
Many Filipino computer users copy the programs they need from computer shops, or from a number of computer bulletin board systems which have proliferated around the metropolis. They [...]