Book Talk: The Big Steal with Prof. Jonathan Barnett

Please join CSIS on Thursday, March 26 for a conversation with Prof. Jonathan Barnett on his latest book, The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property. In this work, Prof. Barnett tells the story of how intellectual property rights were steadily hollowed out just as the digital economy took off. Under the rallying cry, “information wants to be free,” courts, Congress, regulators, the academy, and much of the tech industry embraced utopian policies that made it harder to enforce property rights over inventions and creative works. This change in the "rules of the game" produced a skewed ecosystem that favors platform-based business models over the "idea factories"—universities, "Little Tech," and content creators —that drive critical sectors of the U.S. innovation economy.

This event is made possible through general support to CSIS.