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Strategies for freeing information from the distortions of power in mass media, bureaucracies, intellectual property, surveillance, research and the like.
E-Book Content
Information liberation Challenging the corruptions of information power Brian Martin FREEDOM PRESS London 1998 First published 1998 by Freedom Press 84b Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX ISBN 0 900384 93 X printed in Great Britain by Aldgate Press, Gunthorpe Street, London E1 7RQ Contents 1 Power tends to corrupt 1 2 Beyond mass media 7 3 Against intellectual property 29 4 Antisurveillance 57 5 Free speech versus bureaucracy 83 6 Defamation law and free speech 107 7 The politics of research 123 8 On the value of simple ideas 143 9 Celebrity intellectuals 164 10 Toward information liberation 172 Index 176 (The index is not included in this electronic edition since, due to slight differences in layout, not all page references are correct.) About Freedom Press Freedom Press was founded in 1886 by a group which included Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin. Its publication Freedom, currently a fortnightly, is the oldest anarchist newspaper in continuous production. Other publications include The Raven, a quarterly of anarchist thought begun in 1987, and some 70 book titles currently in print. Authors range from anarchist classics like Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rudolf Rocker, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, to contemporary thinkers like Harold Barclay, Colin Ward and Murray Bookchin. Subjects include anthropology, economics, ecology, education, utopias, capitalism, the state, war and peace, children, land, housing, transport and much more, and the arts are not neglected. There is a set of portrait/biography cards by Clifford Harper, several books of hilarious anarchist strip cartoons, a book of photographs and a children’s story book. Freedom Pre