"Anyone who cares about protecting the vitality of art and democratic culture in the digital age should read this important book." — Pete Seeger The stories would seem silly, embarrassing, or flat-out hilarious, if they weren't so frightening: ASCAP trying to charge the Girl Scouts for the rights to sing songs around a campfire; J.R.R. Tolkien's estate threatening to sue a children's entertainer for calling himself "Gandalf the Wizard Clown"; the J.M. Smucker Company accusing a competitor of infringing its patent on a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And, if you want to poke fun at Mickey Mouse, Barbie, or Miller Lite, you'd better have a battery of lawyers to back you up. In Brand Name Bullies, David Bollier reveals the countless ways in which creativity, innovation, and free expression in American culture are under relentless assault from a new and rapacious breed of corporate bullies. He offers scores of examples of how copyright and trademark owners are using political influence, high-powered attorneys, and out-and-out intimidation to expand their control over our culture. Bollier argues that the free flow of knowledge and ideas is crucial to creativity and progress in every field. Yet this essential ability to share and build upon the work of others is being stifled, marginalized, and criminalized by the forces of privatization. He cites numerous outrageous claims of "ownership" to all sorts of images, words, musical notes, letters, and even smells. Did you know that it is illegal to name a sporting event the "Gay Olympics" or a portable toilet business "Here's Johnny!"? The drive to copyright and trademark virtually everything has a powerful impact on public discourse as well. Bollier uncovers attempts to lock up sports scores, bestseller lists, historic facts, and even Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Beware of using the phrase "Freedom of Expression"! A Massachusetts college student has already applied for and received a registered trademark for those words. Brand Name Bullies makes a powerful case that the rapid and ongoing expansion of "intellectual property rights" is squelching creativity and limiting free expression. It prevents the creation of new music, art, and literature, and it inhibits new scientific research and business investment. This highly readable and chilling exposé sounds an urgent wake-up call for everyone who values our culture and wishes to keep the public domain out of the hands of the privatizers.

An impassioned, darkly amusing look at how corporations misuse copyright law to stifle creativity and free speech If you want to make fun of Mickey or Barbie on your Web site, you may be hearing from some corporate lawyers. You should also think twice about calling something "fair and balanced" or publicly using Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. It may be illegal. Or it may be entirely legal, but the distinction doesn't matter if you can't afford a lawyer. More and more, corporations are grabbing and asserting rights over every idea and creation in our world, regardless of the law's intent or the public interest. But beyond the humorous absurdity of all this, there lies a darker problem, as David Bollier shows in this important new book. Lawsuits and legal bullying clearly prevent the creation of legitimate new software, new art and music, new literature, new businesses, and worst of all, new scientific and medical research. David Bollier (Amherst, MA) is cofounder of Public Knowledge and Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication. His books include Silent Theft.

What creates corporate reputations and how should organizations respond? Corporate reputation is a growing research field in disciplines as diverse as communication, management, marketing, industrial and organizational psychology, and sociology. As a formal area of academic study, it is relatively young with roots in the 1980s and the emergence of specialized reputation rankings for industries, products/services, and performance dimensions and for regions. Such rankings resulted in competition between organizations and the alignment of organizational activities to qualify and improve standings in the rankings. In addition, today’s changing stakeholder expectations, the growth of advocacy, demand for more disclosures and greater transparency, and globalized, mediatized environments create new challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities for organizations. Successfully engaging, dealing with, and working through reputational challenges requires an understanding of options and tools for organizational decision-making and stakeholder engagement. For the first time, the vast and important field of corporate reputation is explored in the format of an encyclopedic reference. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation comprehensively overviews concepts and techniques for identifying, building, measuring, monitoring, evaluating, maintaining, valuing, living up to and/or changing corporate reputations. Key features include: 300 signed entries are organized in A-to-Z fashion in 2 volumes available in a choice of electronic or print formats Entries conclude with Cross-References and Further Readings to guide students to in-depth resources. Although organized A-to-Z, a thematic "Reader’s Guide" in the front matter groups related entries by broad areas A Chronology provides historical perspective on the development of corporate reputation as a discrete field of study. A Resource Guide in the back matter lists classic books, key journals, associations, websites, and selected degree programs of relevance to corporate reputation. A General Bibliography will be accompanied by visual maps noting the relationships between the various disciplines touching upon corporate reputation studies. The work concludes with a comprehensive Index, which—in the electronic version—combines with the Reader’s Guide and Cross-References to provide thorough search-and-browse capabilities

'The volume edited by Andy Pike includes contributions by several leading figures in the study of brands, places and place branding. . . However, this is not what makes the book a welcome addition to the literature. What really makes the book interesting is actually the brave attempt to deal with an intrinsically difficult topic, one that is rarely – if ever – explored: the relationship between brands and branding with the places in and around which these operate. Several facets of this relationship are explored in the book. . . The book is introduced nicely by Andy Pike in a chapter that sets the scene and clarifies the intentions of the book. . . I am glad the first book to handle these issues is on my shelves.' – Mihalis Kavaratzis, Regional Studies 'An incomparably rich trove of work on the multifarious and contradictory "entanglements" between space, place, and brand. The volume helps us understand how and why "places of origin" play an ever greater role in the marketing of commodities, even while corporations continue to seek "placelessness" in pursuit of the bottom line. And it illuminates how and why entrepreneurial governments seeking to enhance global competitiveness increasingly turn to place branding – at the neighborhood, urban, and national scale – even while launching rounds of restructuring that undercut the authenticity and viability of local identities. A valuable and accessible contribution to the urban studies and cultural studies literature.' – Miriam Greenberg, University of California, Santa Cruz, US 'An important effort to pull together multidisciplinary research on the spatial dimensions of brands and branding in an international context.' – John A. Quelch, Harvard Business School, US Despite overstated claims of their 'global' homogeneity, ubiquity and contribution to 'flattening' spatial differences, the geographies of brands and branding actually do matter. This vibrant collection provides a comprehensive reference point for the emergent area of brand and branding geographies in a multi-disciplinary and international context. The eminent contributors, leaders in their respective fields, present critical reflections and synthesis of a range of conceptual and theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, incorporating market research, oral history, discourse and visual analyses. They reflect upon the politics and limits of brand and branding geographies and map out future research directions. The book will prove a fascinating and illuminating read for academics, researchers, students, practitioners and policy-makers focusing on the spatial dimensions of brands and branding.

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This forward-looking book examines the issue of intellectual property (IP) law reform, considering both the reform of primary IP rights, and the impact of secondary rights on such reforms. It reflects on the distinction between primary and secondary rights, offering new international perspectives on IP reform, and exploring both the intended and unintended consequences of changing primary rights or adding secondary rights.

Business is being globalized with an immense speed, but are democratic practices and decision-making structures keeping pace? Contrary to those who see democracy as irrelevant or impossible at the global level, The Challenges of Global Business Authority analyzes three dimensions of democracy- participation, accountability, and transparency-in many transnational mechanisms that seek to align global business interests with the public interest. Looking beyond these mechanisms, this volume seeks to explore the fundamental issues affecting the relationship between democracy and global business authority, such as the structural power of business itself, and the contestations over the boundary between public and private. The essays in this volume provide concrete ways that business can be made more publicly accountable to allow democratic practices to take on a more permanent role in the global business world.