A copyrighted masquerade : how corporate lobbying threatens online freedoms

When thousands marched through ice and snow against a copyright treaty, their cries for free speech on the Internet shot to the heart of the European Union and forced a political U-turn. The mighty entertainment industries could only stare in dismay, their back-room plans in tatters.This highly original analysis of three attempts to bring in new laws to defend copyright on the Internet - ACTA, Ley Sinde and the Digital Economy Act - investigates the dance of influence between lobbyists and their political proxies and unmasks the sophistry of their arguments. Copyright expert Monica Horten outlines the myriad ways that lobbyists contrived to bypass democratic process and persuade politicians to take up their cause in imposing an American corporate agenda. In doing so, she argues the case for stronger transparency in copyright policy-making.A Copyright Masquerade is essential reading for anyone who cares about copyright and the Internet, and to those who care about freedom of speech and good government. Annotation How can we protect the Internet and our right to free speech, when government strings are being pulled by corporate lobbyists with large legal teams and entertainment budgets?A Copyright Masquerade reveals how proposals for Internet copyright enforcement stem from an American corporate agenda linking intellectual property to trade policy. It is an agenda that involves private industry asking government to block the Internet to protect commercial interests. Taking international and European examples from the Wikileaks saga to the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) protests to Britain's Digital Economy Act - Horton peels back the paper on the political process to reveal the repeated pattern of governments trying to hide what they are doing and to fast-track the new copyright measures, precluding democratic debate. She also shows how, supported by a global system of policy surveillance, lobbyists for the entertainment industries are able to be sufficiently convincing that governments often don't even bother to question their rationale. An essential and eye-opening exposé of the threat to online democracy in the digital era When thousands marched through ice and snow against a copyright treaty, their cries for free speech on the Internet shot to the heart of the European Union and forced a political U-turn. The mighty entertainment industries could only stare in dismay, their back-room plans in tatters. This highly original analysis of three attempts to bring in new laws to defend copyright on the Internet - ACTA, Ley Sinde and the Digital Economy Act - investigates the dance of influence between lobbyists and their political proxies and unmasks the sophistry of their arguments. Copyright expert Monica Horten outlines the myriad ways that lobbyists contrived to bypass democratic process and persuade politicians to take up their cause in imposing an American corporate agenda. In doing so, she argues the case for stronger transparency in copyright policy-making. A Copyright Masquerade is essential reading for anyone who cares about copyright and the Internet, and to those who care about freedom of speech and good government. Hollywood lobbyists, secret talks and one unlikely explosive issue - internet copyright. In this original analysis of three attempts to bring in new laws to defend copyright on the internet, Monica Horten investigates the dance of influence between lobbyists and their political proxies and unmasks the sophistry of their arguments.