This ongoing research project has investigated the transformation of copyright law for the digital age, particularly the development of technical copy protection strategies and their implications for authorship, technology, and cultural expression. The debate over these changes happens in obvious places such as the press and Congress, but it also occurs in quieter venues -- these anti-piracy campaigns being one such venue. Considering these materials not only offers insight into the copyright dispute itself, but raises questions about corporate intervention into classrooms, the role of third parties in the legal education of citizens, and the broader question of how and by whom the rules of digital society are being established.

To curb unauthorized downloading, the major film, music, and software corporations have developed public education campaigns aimed at children, extolling the virtues of copyright and the immorality of piracy. Some are curricular materials to be incorporated into K-12 classrooms. Through an examination of the materials themselves and through interviews with their designers, my research examines not only their characterization of copyright law, but their implicit claims about how, why, and by whom digital culture is produced, circulated, and consumed. These campaigns traffic in and perpetuate familiar notions of what copyright is for, how technology is meant to be used, and why culture is important, helping to structure the dynamics of cultural participation.

This ongoing research project has investigated the transformation of copyright law for the digital age.

From this inquiry will emerge a scholarly analysis of the way innovation in knowledge production tangles with existing rules, assumptions, and the institutions who seek to preserve them, a deeper understanding of the way youth are implicated in these contests in ways that shape their access to information literacy, and an interactive resource useful for teachers and students to more effectively interrogate received notions of how knowledge may be produced and distributed in a digital age.

Information Technology and Digital Society

Dmitry Epstein (Communication)