[Ag Meinungsfindungstool] New book: "Pirate Politics" by Patrick Burkart

[Michael Allan <mike AT zelea.com>]

----- Forwarded from Michael Zimmer <zimmerm AT uwm.edu>,
      AoIR mailing list <air-l AT listserv.aoir.org> -----

Colleagues:  I’m very pleased to announce that the sixth book in the MIT 
Press collection “Information Society Series” I am co-editing with Laura 
DeNardis has been released:

Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests
by Patrick Burkart
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/pirate-politics

The Swedish Pirate Party emerged as a political force in 2006 when a group of 
software programmers and file-sharing geeks protested the police takedown of 
The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing search engine. The Swedish Pirate 
Party, and later the German Pirate Party, came to be identified with a “free 
culture” message that came into conflict with the European Union’s legal 
system. In this book, Patrick Burkart examines the emergence of Pirate 
politics as an umbrella cyberlibertarian movement that views file sharing as 
a form of free expression and advocates for the preservation of the Internet 
as a commons. He links the Pirate movement to the Green movement, arguing 
that they share a moral consciousness and an explicit ecological agenda based 
on the notion of a commons, or public domain. The Pirate parties, like the 
Green Party, must weigh ideological purity against pragmatism as they move 
into practical national and regional politics.

Burkart uses second-generation critical theory and new social movement theory 
as theoretical perspectives for his analysis of the democratic potential of 
Pirate politics. After setting the Pirate parties in conceptual and political 
contexts, Burkart examines European antipiracy initiatives, the influence of 
the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and the pressure exerted on 
European governance by American software and digital exporters. He argues 
that pirate politics can be seen as “cultural environmentalism,” a defense of 
Internet culture against both corporate and state colonization.

About the Author

Patrick Burkart is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at 
Texas A&M University and the author of Music and Cyberliberties and Digital 
Music Wars: Ownership and Control of the Celestial Jukebox (with Tom McCourt).

About the Series

Information Society Series: An Interdisciplinary Series on Technology, Law, 
and Society
Series Editors, Laura DeNardis and Michael Zimmer
MIT Press
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/information-society-series

The Information Society Series addresses the social, legal, and policy 
implications of the Internet and new information technologies and will 
especially feature works from the growing global ranks of interdisciplinary 
scholars in information schools; communications departments; science, 
technology, and society programs; and programs in law, technology, and 
culture.

We are accepting book proposals for the series. Preference will be given to 
monographs rather than edited volumes and books that are interdisciplinary, 
normative, and global in scope. Book proposals should include:

        • a prospectus (brief description, outstanding features and 
uniqueness of work, audience and market considerations, status of book, and 
recommended reviewers);
        • a detailed table of contents;
        • sample chapters; and
        • the authors curriculum vitae.

Please submit completed proposals to denardis AT american.edu and zimmerm AT uwm.edu


-- 
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
e: zimmerm AT uwm.edu
w: www.michaelzimmer.org


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