[Random-bits] Henry Jenkins on Digital Land Grab

[James Love]

Thank to David Akin for the pointer:

>From MIT's Technology Review:

Digital Land Grab
Media corporations are stealing our cultural heritage. Can we take it back?
By Henry Jenkins
http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/viewpoint.htm

"Preparing for this new era, media companies are expanding their legal
control over intellectual property as far and as wide as possible,
strip-mining our culture in the process. They have made inventive uses
of trademark law to secure exclusive rights to everything from Spock's
pointy ears to Superman's cape, pushed policies that erode the remaining
protections for fair use, and lobbied for an expansion of the duration
of their copyright protection and thus prevented works from falling into
the public domain until they've been drained of value. In the end, we
all suffer a diminished right to quote and critique core cultural
materials. Imagine what our holiday season would look like if Clement
Moore had trademarked Santa Claus!