? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

Everything belongs to someone. In the age of the internet, with so many creations at our disposal, the fight for copyright is no easy feat. When something isn’t tangible, that fight becomes even harder, complicating the rules of ownership, all of which are covered in Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs.

The concept of intellectual ownership has a long history,going back to eighteenth-century London. At first, it was all about books and their printers, but later it evolved to immaterial goods with the same type of ownership we applied to land extending far beyond property. And as time moved on, these laws evolved even further to and continue to develop to this day.

How we got to this pointis what author David Bellos covers in his book. But along with ownership comes inequality, and Bellos brings that to the table. With many people standing against the concept, how did it get so far? And who exactly is it meant to protect?

Detailed but humorous: Bellos’ style is easy to follow even with a topic as dense as this. It’s not a light read by any means and covers a lot of history, but the narrative it develops is interesting without using too much legalese — something we’re grateful for.

You can buy the book as aKindle or as a hardcover on Amazon.

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