ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I argued that the property stewardship narrative told by the entertainment industry normalizes the regulation of technology through copyright law and identifi es the use of digital networks to distribute cultural goods to consumers as its natural, inevitable purpose. The narrative, while failing to take into account the distinctive topology of cultural production in a digital age, gains strength by suggesting coherence with legal history and the “natural right” of proprietary authorship in copyright law. In tension with this property stewardship narrative is another narrative told by the technology companies and their supporters: the cultural conservancy narrative. This version of the digital copyright story identifi es the confl ict as one between stultifi ed creators and a powerful entertainment industry that seeks increased legal protections over already overregulated cultural production. According to the narrative of cultural conservancy, recent expansions of U.S. copyright law are unnecessary and unprincipled, damaging information fl ow and inhibiting the future creation of works by perpetually affording more rights to self-interested corporate copyright owners. Supporters of the cultural conservancy model of intellectual property regulation argue that technological developments have made visible the fact that the current regime of copyright law does not work well to balance creativity and technology innovation. Legal protections for intellectual and creative works, based on notions of property, do not offer creators the freedoms necessary to access and build on existing works and to create new ones. Very different from the property stewardship narrative, the cultural conservancy narrative emphasizes the importance of protecting access to existing works, which have become “endangered resources,” for ongoing intellectual and creative expression in our culture. In order to ensure the continuation of the production of intellectual property in the twenty-fi rst century, or a “healthy” environment of cultural production, the use of digital technologies for sharing, creating, collaborating, and distributing intellectual and creative works should be encouraged through less restrictive copyright law.
