Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized-one...

Explores the complexities of intellectual property in the era of peer-to-peer file sharing. Interviews key figures in the debate, including Gregg Gillis, the Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, a mash-up artist rearranging the pop chart's DNA with his incongruous, entirely sample-based songs. A mash-up in itself, this shatters the wall between users and producers, and challenges the thresholds of 'fair use.'

"Conventional wisdom holds that intellectual property rights are essential for innovation. But are copyright and patents really necessary to spark creativity? In The Knockoff Economy, Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman provocatively argue that creativity can not only survive in the face of copying, but can thrive. The Knockoff Economy approaches the question of incentives and innovation in a wholly new way--by exploring creative fields that do...