A brilliant and expansive article was recently written by Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who will become an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University this fall. He is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001).
The professor’s piece titled “Copyright as Cudgel” published by the “The Chronicle Review” discusses how through the 1998 “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” passed by Congress, copyright law has become largely a “cudgel” used by some special interests, as a means to control information and silence or constrain critics.
This legislation has often been the preferred weapon of choice used by Scientology to silence its critics on the Internet. Interestingly, it was now deceased Scientologist, California Congressman Sonny Bono, who sponsored the “Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998,” which extended the term of copyright protection by 20 years. Scientologists must have sung the refrain, “I’ve got you babe.”
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