Understanding Copyright

Lee Edwards is Professor of Strategic Communications and Public Engagement in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is particularly interested in the relationship between strategic communications and inequalities, social justice, democracy, and media literacy. She has published a wide range of articles, books, chapters and reports on topics including deliberative engagement in media policymaking, media literacy, public relations as a cultural intermediary, diversity in public relations, and public relations and democracy.

Digital networks allow millions to vote with their mice against copyright law even as digitally global creative industries vote with their millions to uphold their control. In contrast Klein, Moss and Edwards call for a revitalized and deliberative democratic debate over the future of copyright. This clear, balanced and informative account of the current state of copyright in the digital age is itself a vital contribution to that debate.

• Chapter 1: Introduction: Understanding Copyright in the Digital AgeChapter 2: A Brief History of Copyright: Where We Are and How We Got HereChapter 3: Copyright and the Creative Economy: How the Cultural Industries Exert InfluenceChapter 4: Technologies and Corporations in the Middle: How Internet Intermediaries are Drawn into the DebateChapter 5: Creative Workers and Copyright: How Current and Future Creators Benefit from Cultural LabourChapter 6: Consumers, Criminals, Patrons, Pirates: How Users Connect to CopyrightChapter 7: Copyright Policy: How Policy Represents (or Fails to Represent) Different GroupsChapter 8: The Future of Copyright: How We Can Learn from the Debate