Complex Copyright: Mapping the Information Ecosystem

By: Deborah Tussey

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Synopsis: This book draws on a wide selection of interdisciplinary literature discussing complex adaptive systems - including scholarship from economics, political science, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and religion - to apply general complexity tenets to the institutions, conceptual framework, and theoretical justifications of the copyright system, both in the United States and internationally. The author argues that copyrighted works are the products of complex creative systems and, consequently, designers of copyright regimes for the global 'information ecosystem' should look to complexity theory for guidance. Urging legal scholars to undertake empirical studies of real-world copyright systems, Tussey reveals how the selection of workable configurations for the copyright regime is larger than that encompassed by the traditional, entirely theoretical, debate between private property rights and the commons. Finally, this unique study articulates how copyright law must tolerate certain chaotic elements that may be essential to the sustainability of complex systems.