A quick history of the changing lengths of copyright protection
Since its codification in Britain in 1710, the length of copyright protection has continued to be extended, from an initial 14 years to today’s 70 – 120 or more years.
Considering comparative approaches in legal histories
I have proposed comparative/transnational approaches between legal and societal understandings of privacy in the face of new technologies. Micol Siegel’s work suggests that I should, at the very least, consider my approach more critically.
Going beyond national legal histories
“Lived history,” writes Bender, “is embedded in a plenitude of narratives. … [O]ver time, different themes or concepts, different narratives, will be deemed significant and emphasized” (page 1). The “plenitude of narratives” is formed by the stories historians tell about the past, by people at the time speaking and living their own experiences, by groups (ethnicities, races, classes, nations, cities) sharing common understandings, and is thus never simple nor unitary.
Changing technology, changing expectations of privacy
My goal here is to compare and contrast the legal changes that occurred as new technologies – state-run postal services, the telegraph, the telephone, and email, for example – emerged, and through this to seek insight into these larger questions.
Dorinda Outram on the Enlightenment
In her book The Enlightenment, Dorinda Outram gives a broad introduction to the history and historiography of the Enlightenment.
Technology and the archive
One of the primary interests of mine is the connection between technology and law. The development of archives is one place where this connection plays out in practice. This I am deeply interested in the question presented by Schwartz and Cook present as to what the impact of new technologies – like “postal services, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, photography” – was on “on the production, preservation, and use of records and archives since the mid-nineteenth century.”
The archive and the state
Archives, the collection of files and materials (electronic or physical) stored and maintained for future reference, have an intimate connection with state power – after all, those who are in power fund and create them, leading archives to reflect the ideas, beliefs and sometimes contradictions of those who control them.
Fashion fakes: copyright, trademark and creativity
There is no protection from copying designs in the fashion industry, so how can police crackdown on knock-offs?
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