TyAnna K. Herrington explains current intellectual property law and examines the effect of the Internet and ideological power on its interpretation. Promoting a balanced development of our national culture, she advocates educators’ informed participation in ensuring egalitarian public access to information. She discusses the control of information and the creation of knowledge in terms of the way control functions under current property law.

“Compelling and significant, . . . this book calls our attention to an important issue for communication studies, humanities, and most of U.S. and world culture at the turn of the century: intellectual property and how legal constructions are often at odds with the dominant paradigms of most academic disciplines. [Herrington] argues that the Internet forces us to examine our practices and ideologies in relation to intellectual property law and asks us to take action to ensure that the balance built into the U.S. Constitution remains in place. In particular, this book argues that the legal trends of protectionism, corporate ownership, and rights of owners (versus rights of the public) are at odds with traditional academic norms and with the norms of Internet culture. Anyone, particularly any academic, who works with distance education, on-line publishing, Internet-based classrooms, or Internet research will find this book to be of great interest.”—Laura J. Gurak, authorof Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace

“Herrington’s book should be required reading for academics, especially those in the humanities. The author explains the legal definitions and issues with care and clarity; she demystifies the complexities of constitutional and statutory law concerning copyright and intellectual property. Just as important, she shows how various interest groups seek to manipulate the debate by controlling the legal terms through which the debate is conducted. She argues persuasively that our society needs to weigh the economic interests of the owners of intellectual work against the larger academic and public interests in making this work available. She demonstrates that the problem is too important to be left to the lawyers.”—Jay David Bolter, from the Foreword