Book Project: Hollywood's Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet

The choosing process:

I initially went to Amazon, and searched with key words from this class (Information, Communication) paired with things I'm interested in (Film, Music, Comics) and would want to read about. This gave me nothing. I then went through texts we had read for the class and entered in the author of pieces that I liked. This gave me something. Through my search for William Cronon I came up on "Manifest Destinations," which looks very interesting, and would be one of my three candidates. Through my search for Clay Shirky I came up with "Promised Land". Finally, out of curiosity, I called up my parents, who are considerably better read than I am, to see if they had read anything along these lines, and through that I got an author (Siva Vaidhyanathan) which got me, finally, to the book "Hollywood's Copyright Wars". At this point of my exhilarating, tear jerking, narrative, I'll call this book the anti-Dark Horse as I kind of knew I was going to do it.

The choosing process Part II: The Candidates

a) Manifest Destinations: Cities and Tourists in the Nineteenth-Century American West.
This looks very interesting, however I was made slightly nervous by the constraint of the time period it was written about. It was also quite expensive, had no reviews on Amazon, and was available in very few places (all no doubt due to the fact it was released roughly a month ago).

b) Promised Land: Youth Culture, Disruptive Startups, and the Social Music Revolution.   
I could pretty much copy and paste everything about the above text, and place it here. Looked very interesting, but its relative newness bred 0 reviews/libraries having it

c) Hollywood's Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet (Film and Culture Series).
The anti-Dark Horse! This had three amazon reviews, 2 five star reviews (one from a lawyer) and one 1 star review which reads as follows: I was forced to buy this book as part of a class I was taking in college. I read through the entire book and I can honestly say it is one of the most boring books I've ever read..." It was featured at 1000+ libraries, and had a few positive scholarly reviews.

I eventually chose option c) due to the subject matter and the general press it had gotten. I think it will have some interesting insight not just on copyright law, but on how a greater force, such as the government, or the Hollywood system, can restrict and censor media. It will, I think, tie in interestingly with the various hierarchies of control, and how that impacts the production of mass culture, we've read about it in class.
(I'm sure you'll find your fans Manifest Destinations: Cities and Tourists in the Nineteenth-Century American West and Promised Land: Youth Culture, Disruptive Startups, and the Social Music Revolution! Keep your head high!)

And now the for the dessert: Citations of reviews!

 

King, Diana. Portal : Libraries and the Academy13.1 (Jan 2013): 116-118.

 

Real, Brian. Film Quarterly66.2 (Winter 2012): 57-58,3.

 

Van Riper, A Bowdoin. Film & History43.2 (Fall 2013): 94-95.

 

 

 

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