Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity (Doubleday/Random House, 2005)

Released under Creative Commons License 2005.
	

FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1998, university professor and professional prankster Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression" as a joke, an amusing if dark way to comment on how intellectual property law is increasingly being used to fence off the culture and restrict the way we're allowed to express ideas. But what's happened in recent years to intellectual property law is no joke and has had repercussions on our culture and our everyday lives. The trend toward privatization of everything—melodies, genes, public space, English language—means an inevitable clash of economic values against the value of free speech, creativity, and shared resources. In Freedom of Expression®, Kembrew McLeod covers topics as diverse as hip-hop music and digital sampling, the patenting of seeds and human genes, folk and blues music, visual collage art, electronic voting, the Internet, and computer software. In doing so, he connects this rapidly accelerating push to pin down everything as a piece of private property to its effects on music, art, and science.

In much the same way that Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation tied together disparate topics through the narrative thread of the fast food business, and written in a witty style that brings to mind media pranksters like Al Franken, Ken Kesey, and Abbie Hoffman, Freedom of Expression® uses intellectual property law as the focal point to show how economic concerns are seriously eroding creativity and free speech.


About the Author
A journalist, activist, artist, and professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, KEMBREW McLEOD is the author of Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law (Peter Lang, 2001) and has written music criticism for Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, Spin, and Mojo. He is also the coproducer of a 2001 documentary on the music industry, Money for Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music, and a documentary on intellectual property law, Copyright Criminals, which will be completed in 2005. 


Praise for Freedom of Expression®
“A very funny treatment of an increasingly serious problem: the use of intellectual property rights in ways that suppress instead of foster creativity.”
—William Fisher, Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard University

“Freedom of Expression is one of the sharpest weapons in the culture wars being waged over the extensive protections now accorded to intellectual property. A lively read, the book brims with humor, juicy examples, and the voices of those whose creativity is threatened and endangered. If you had any doubts about the way intellectual property is shaping popular culture, Kembrew McLeod will dispel them. The privatization of culture has found its most trenchant critic.”
—Rosemary Coombe, author of The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties

“People, this is it…. A must-read for anyone who wants to actually change the way digital culture operates.”
—Paul D. Miller aka. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid

“The ability of creators to parlay their expressive efforts with technology falls within a battleground that accountants, lawyers, and lawmakers dictate with barbed boundaries. That’s as impossible as owning the air itself, which Kembrew McLeod states and identifies clearly.”
—Chuck D, Public Enemy

“Professor McLeod’s book should be required reading for anyone concerned with having free speech and free press as the trademarks of Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street and the kingpins of Madison Avenue. The stakes are somewhat high — like the future of our society.”
—Robert W. McChesney, author of The Problem of the Media

“Kembrew McLeod has written a lively and funny book about life in the age of Intellectual Property Madness. In the spirit of Woody Guthrie himself, this book is your book.”
—Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library

FROM THE CRITICS
Publisher's Weekly
Can the words "freedom of expression" be trademarked? Well, they have been-by McLeod, who consistently follows the phrase with a , to point up the absurdity of Fox's trademarking of "fair and balanced." As he shows, the notion of intellectual property now extends well beyond digital music sampling to biology (gene patenting) and "scents and gestures"-and laws governing it, the author says, are being wielded like a bludgeon. McLeod, a University of Iowa communications professor, charts the effects of the intense commercialization of intellectual property from cultural, legal and technological perspectives, asserting that the current environment handcuffs creators who used to be encouraged to build on past creations. Now, the author posits, potential creators "engage in self-censorship" out of fear of copyright or trademark infringement lawsuits, pushing culture toward a weak, commercial center of creativity. While McLeod's arguments aren't original, his entertaining examples and punchy writing nicely amplify the concerns voiced by an increasing number of intellectual property scholars, such as Lawrence Lessig. Although he evokes dark, almost Orwellian images throughout, McLeod manages an upbeat spin, citing the "egalitarian" nature of the new technologies and a growing awareness of the need to return to a place where "freedom of expression" is once again "a meaningful concept that guides our political, social and creative lives." Agent, Sarah Lazin Books. (On sale Feb. 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews
A tart critique of copyright bullying, a practice that squelches creativity and interferes with the give-and-take of artistry. Music journalist and intellectual property expert McLeod (Communications Studies/Univ. of Iowa) starts with a broadside at trademark law. Originally designed to prevent consumer confusion and unfair competition, it has run amok in recent years, he argues, hindering free expression, encouraging self-censorship due to fear of litigation, and enabling the privatization of everything from genes to hand gestures. As for copyright itself, once a tool that secured for a limited time exclusive rights for authors and inventors as a means to promote the dissemination of creativity, McLeod persuasively contends that it has become a weapon that stifles creativity through excessive periods of rights and the threat of lawsuits. The ability to comment on the ideas, images, and words that saturate us daily by parodying, criticizing or using them as examples has been stolen from the arena of free speech and recast as an economic issue. Much of our cultural heritage, the author reminds us, has been the result of artistic exchange (i.e., borrowing): blues, folk music, painting, collage, architecture, verbal imagery, all have benefited from the hijackings of, among others, T.S. Eliot, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Marianne Moore, the Dadaists, the Situationists, and digital samplers. McLeod gives plenty of examples of absurd copyright bullying, as when ASCAP demanded that Girl Scouts purchase performance licenses for songs they sang around the campfire. Yes, of course, creators should be fairly rewarded for their work, the author agrees, but that's taken care of under existing copyrightand fair-use laws. The movement today is in the other direction, with private corporations arguing that they can best manage public resources like the water supply and the radio spectrum. And when privatization usurps the cultural commons, the free flow of ideas is impeded, and scientific research inhibited. In McLeod's expert hands, legal misuse makes good tragicomedy, a theater of greed and control. Agent: Sarah Lazin/Sarah Lazin Books