[Sigtis-l] New book in Information Society series: "Pirate Politics" by Patrick Burkart

[Michael Zimmer]

Colleagues:  (apologies for cross-posts)

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