In recent years we have witnessed a rising tension between the open architecture of the Internet and legal restrictions for online activities. The impact of digital recording technologies and distributed file sharing systems has forever changed the expectations of everyday users with regard to digital information. At the same time, however, U.S. Copyright Law has shown a decided trend toward more restrictions over what we are able to do with digital materials. As a result, a gap has emerged between the reality of copyright law and the social reality of our everyday activities. Through an analysis of the competing rhetorical frameworks about copyright regulation in a digital age, this book shows how the stories told by active parties in the debate shape our cultural understanding of what is and is not acceptable in the use of copyrighted works on digital networks. Reyman posits recent legal developments as sites of conflict between competing value systems in our culture: one of control, relying heavily on comparisons of intellectual property to physical property, and emphasizing ownership, theft, and piracy, and the other a value of community, implementing new concepts such as that of an intellectual "commons," and emphasizing exchange, collaboration, and responsibility to a public good. Reyman argues that the rhetoric of the digital copyright debate, namely the rhetorical positioning of technology as destructive to creative and intellectual production, has profound implications for the future of digital culture.

`This is an ambitious, original, and complex treatment of key aspects of contemporary capitalism. It makes a major contribution because it profoundly destabilizes the scholarship on globalization, the so-called new economy, information technology, distinct contemporary business cultures and practices' - Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and its Discontents

`Nigel Thrift offers us the sort of cultural analysis of global capitalism that has long been needed - one that emphasizes the innovative energy of global capitalism. The book avoids stale denouncements and offers instead a view of capitalism as a form of practice' - Karin Knorr Cetina, Professor of Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany

Capitalism is well known for producing a form of existence where `everything solid melts into air'. But what happens when capitalism develops theories about itself? Are we moving into a condition in which capitalism can be said to possess a brain?

These questions are pursued in this sparkling and thought-provoking book. Thrift looks at what he calls "the cultural circuit of capitalism," the mechanism for generating new theories of capitalism. The book traces the rise of this circuit back to the 1960s when a series of institutions locked together to interrogate capitalism, to the present day, when these institutions are moving out to the Pacific basin and beyond. What have these theories produced? How have they been implicated in the speculative bubbles that characterized the late twentieth century? What part have they played in developing our understanding of human relations?

Building on an inter-disciplinary approach which embraces the core social sciences, Thrift outlines an exciting new theory for understanding capitalism. His book is of interest to readers in Geography, Social Theory, Antrhopology and Cultural Economics.

Coping in an era of information flows, of virtual relationships and breakneck change poses challenges to one and all.

In Theories of the Information Society Frank Webster makes sense of the information explosion, taking a sceptical look at what thinkers mean when they refer to the 'Information Society' and critically examines the major post-war theories and approaches to informational development. This third edition brings the book right up to date with both new theoretical work and, social and technological changes (such as the rapid growth of the Internet and accelerated globalization), reassessing the work of key theorists in light of these changes.

This book is essential reading for students of contemporary social theory and anybody interested in social and technological change in the post-war era. It addresses issues of central concern to students of sociology, politics, communications, information science, cultural studies, computing and librarianship.

A tour de force on why our viewing habits can act as a means for good, this book also comes with a warning that in meeting our voracious appetites for television, we may well be destroying liberty itself.