Creative exploitation: intellectual property as a form of neoliberal cultural policy

"Until relatively recently, intellectual property (IP) has largely gone unnoticed as a subject deserving of widespread public interest and scrutiny. In the past twenty-years, it has garnered increasing attention from a growing number of academics across a range of disciplines and from an ever-growing number of stake-holders in society. Several interrelated factors have contributed to this spark in interest in IP. The rise of digital technologies and the internet through the 1990's created a "networked society" (Castells 1996) that has brought greater attention to the exchange and control of knowledge and culture in a range of human activities. 1 The push towards global neoliberalism, reflected in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its control of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), has resulted in a phenomenon that Toby Miller (1996) dubbed the "new international division of cultural labour" (NICL), which is marked by the shift towards the production of intangible or informational goods as a key driver of industrialized economies. Also, the increasing overlap between culture and the economy in postmodern society, in what Frederic Jameson calls "the cultural turn" (1998) focused attention on the commodification and consumption of culture in everyday life"--From the Introduction pages 1, 2.