The dissidents of intellectual property have had a rich history among avant-garde artists, zine producers, radical musicians, and the subcultural fringe. Today the fight against intellectual property is being led by lawyers, professors and members of government. Not only is the social strata of the leading players very different, which in itself might not be such an important detail, but the framework of the struggle against intellectual property has completely changed. Before law professors like Lawrence Lessig became interested in IP, the discourse among dissidents was against any ownership of the commons, intellectual or physical. Now center stage is occupied by supporters of property and economic privilege. The argument is no longer that the author is a fiction and that property is theft, but that intellectual property law needs to be restrained and reformed because it now infringes upon the rights of creators.

Benjamin developed his method in his early teens and worked hard at practicing his craft. Here is the exceprt with a few added line breaks for legibility. About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts.

"We should have some ways of connecting programs like garden hose--screw in another segment when it becomes necessary to massage data in another way. This is the way of IO also."

Advice from Doug Mcilroy

One cannot call the history of intellectual property a purely proletarian struggle. While ancient Roman laws afforded a form of copyright protection to authors, n14 the rise of Anglo-Saxon copyright was a saga of publishing interests attempting to protect a concentrated market and a central government attempting to apply a subtle form of censorship to the new technology of the printing press.

In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke argued that property stabilized society and prevented political and social turmoil that, he believed, would result from a purely meritocratic order. n8 Property served as a counterweight protecting the class of persons who possessed it against competition from nonpropertied people of natural ability and talent. To Burke, the French National Assembly -- dominated by upstart lawyers from the provinces -- exemplified the risk of disorder and inexperience of an unpropertied leadership. n9 In contrast, the British parliament, a proper mix of talented commoners and propertied Lords, ruled successfully.

Procedural History: Record what has happened procedurally in the case up until this point. The dates of case filings, motions of summary judgment, court rulings, trials, and verdicts or judgments should be noted, but usually this isn’t an extremely important part of a case brief unless the court decision is heavily based in procedural rules—or unless you note that your professor loves to focus on procedural history.

The District Court, sitting without a jury, awarded plaintiff a judgment for the amount of the reward, and hence this appeal.

On such subjects did the ancients, for the most part, exercise the faculty of eloquence, borrowing their mode of argument, however, from the logicians. To speak on fictitious cases, in imitation of pleadings in the forum or in public councils, is generally allowed to have become a practice among the Greeks, about the time of Demetrius Phalereus.

would exercise the pupils under his care in the reading of history and even still more in that of speeches,

Words derived from antiquity have not only illustrious patrons, but also confer on style a certain majesty not unattended with pleasure, for they have the authority of age and, as they have been disused for a time, bring with them a charm similar to that of novelty