As our day-to-day lives depend more and more on creating “content,” the arcane and often misunderstood rules of Copyright and Intellectual Property have an outsize—yet mostly invisible—affect on us. The Copyright and Intellectual Property area seeks to foster an interdisciplinary discussion about the tumultuous cultural battle raging over how we understand the production and distribution of knowledge. We welcome presentations both scholarly and practical that explore the philosophy of copyright, the nuance of copyright enforcement, and the practicalities of living in a world where everything we make becomes intellectual property.

Possible topics could include but are not limited to: - Case studies of recent copyright decisions - Copyright and IP legislation - Politics and Copyright - Ideologies and philosophies of intellectual property - The decline of the public domain - Creative Commons and Fair Use in the public sphere - Digital Rights Management and the battle over control - Libraries and archives in the digital age - Creativity and copyright in the digital age - Copyright in Popular Culture - International issues regarding intellectual property

Submission information: Please submit your 200-word abstract using the PCA web submission form at pcaaca.org. You must be a current, paid member to submit to the conference.

More information on the conference can be found on the PCA website: http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/

Email questions to Brendan Riley, Area Chair briley@colum.edu