A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today’s social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change. Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance.

'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.

During the past fifteen years, changes in technology have generated an extraordinary array of new ways in which music and movies can be produced and distributed. Both the creators and the consumers of entertainment products stand to benefit enormously from the new systems. Sadly, we have failed thus far to avail ourselves of these opportunities. Instead, much energy has been devoted to interpreting or changing legal rules in hopes of defending older business models against the threats posed by the new technologies. These efforts to plug the multiplying holes in the legal dikes are failing and the entertainment industry has fallen into crisis. This provocative book chronicles how we got into this mess and presents three alternative proposals--each involving a combination of legal reforms and new business models--for how we could get out of it.

“One of the most brilliant, lucid, and readable explanations of what is increasingly America’s national treasure: our intellectual property.” —Scott Turow In Copyright’s Highway, one of the nation’s leading authorities on intellectual property law offers an engaging and intelligent analysis of the effect of copyright on American politics, economy, and culture. From eighteenth-century copyright law, to the “celestial jukebox,” to the future of copyright issues in the digital age, Paul Goldstein presents a thorough examination of the challenges facing copyright owners and users. In this fully updated second edition, the author expands the discussion to cover the latest developments and shifts in copyright law for a new audience of scholars and students. This expanded edition introduces readers to present and future debates regarding copyright law and policy, including a new chapter on the technological shift in emphasis from producer to consumer and the legal shift from exclusive rights to exceptions and limitations to those rights. From Gutenberg to Google Books, Copyright’s Highway, Second Edition, offers a concise, essential resource for the internet generation. Praise for Copyright’s Highway “Paul Goldstein’s eloquent call for a more human-centered discipline of copyright blends perception and prescription to great effect, indicating to the reader how far copyright has yet to go to help creativity flourish—and how it might cover the distance.” —Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard University “Goldstein can make the complex issues of copyright law accessible and captivating without sacrificing the nuances of law, politics, and custom that underlie them. With this second edition of Copyright’s Highway, Goldstein adds timely narratives, such as the Google Book Project, to illustrate the evolving nature of copyright law and its importance to our everyday lives.” —Marshall Leaffer, Indiana University Maurer School of Law “A much-awaited new edition of Paul Goldstein’s landmark synthesis of the history and policies of US copyright law. Goldstein’s comprehensive and deep understanding of the legal, economic, and technological interests at stake thoroughly illuminates this sensitive and accessible study. A new concluding chapter meticulously and critically examines the challenges of “competing with free” and the landscape-altering consequences of copyright’s encounter with internet platforms.” —Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University

The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.