Those in the UK will no doubt be aware that yesterday saw what may well be the last Queen’s Speech during the administration of this Labour government. While there was a general brouhaha about the value or otherwise of committing to new legislation changes so close to an election and how much was merely electioneering rather than improving the lot for citizens a couple of things or relevance to the STEVO project have arisen following the speech. The three strikes initiative that has been driven by Lord Mandelson where those accused of downloading illegal files will have their internet...
The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property
My recent post mentioning the the rhetoric and routine of file sharing prompted me to revisit a paper by Majid Yar from a couple of years ago. Yar is a criminologist in the UK specialising in internet crime and has published several pieces on intellectual property and piracy. In his paper, ‘The rhetorics and myths of anti-piracy campaigns’, he looks as some reoccurring themes in anti-piracy educational materials used in different parts of the world. From this he identifies four trope (or ‘myths’) which are routinely present in these literatures: Trope 1: the myth of property as a natural...
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