Having built a background on IP generally with "Essentials…", I now turn my attention to IP law as it relates to the digital. Having just finished the introduction and put down the book, I can say that I'm glad to have not only focused on the digital, but also to have selected "Digital Copyright" by Jessica Litman as the book to introduce its workings.
Litman begins by presenting the interesting idea that copyright law is, ideally, the balance struck between public good and private incentive. In it's purest incarnation, "the law is designed to benefit authors for creating new works and thus to promote the progress of knowledge and art." (13) Note that she does not suggest that this ideal matches in any approximation that current state of law. I did not intend for the book focusing on digital copyright to take a normative stance, but she clearly is concerned that IP law is being steered in a direction destructive to the public interest. The plan was for this read to be a neutral overview of the specifics of digital copyright in a similar way that "Essentials…" was to be an neutral overview of IP law generally. As it turns out, "Essentials…" tilted towards strengthened regulations of use, and "Digital Copyright" warns against that very inclination. Per the nature of things, however, the balance of two distinct positions will probably leave me with a better understanding than if they'd both attempted to be truly neutral.
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