Daniel Sutko

Rewiring the DMCA’s history: 20th-century new media and the expanding imaginary for infringement

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as a refinement of governmental techniques developed for technologies such as piano rolls, reprography, DAT, and VCRs. The technological history recontextualizes legal transitions in copyrights during the 20th century and builds on poststructuralist work on law, technology, and government. Building on Kittler’s understanding of symbolic/technical media and storage/processing, I develop a framework for disentangling the relationship among copyright, DRM, and media technologies. The case studies indicate ICTs are vectors for extending copyright into previously unimagined territories. I argue cultural practices become problematized as they are remediated in new technologies. The evidence suggests the shift from governing storage to processing corresponds to broader rearrangements in power, binding our rituals and means of perception ever more tightly to articulations of industry and state.

Ghost writer in the machine: the politics of determining the machinic/expressive functions of software

ABSTRACT The 1978 Report of the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works laid groundwork for three contemporary struggles over the politics of digital technologies: copying software, modifying software, and End User License Agreements. I critically analyze the document, situating it within a genealogy of digital media, computational history, and communication philosophy. Beginning with the question of whether software is communication, the report articulates theoretical concerns relevant today, including: post/cyborg-humanism; materiality; form and content; inscription and legibility; and function vs. expression. I conclude that the unarticulated, animating question was to identify what counts, ethically and politically, as a creative body.

Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, by Burkart, Patrick

Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests is a solid contribution to critical information studies and information and communication technology policy research. It presents the first in-d...