Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyrights Made the Online World

Copyright’s profound impact on the online world as we know it

This book is a captivating exploration of the profound impact of American copyright law on our online lives. By telling stories about hope, art, greed, and fear and how they have affected the legal dimensions of creativity and technological change, this book uncovers the hidden forces shaping our digital world.

Gerardo Con Díaz examines the strange world of online copyrights from the 1990s to today’s AI-driven era, showing how our ability to immerse ourselves in digital media depends on the erosion of what it means for people to own their creative works, online and offline. He delves into the often overlooked impact of digital ownership on privacy and self-expression in this fascinating field guide to the complex landscape of online rights.

Gerardo Con Díaz is associate professor of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis, and an editor of Studies in Computing and Culture, a book series on the social studies of digital technology. He is the author of the prize-winning book Software Rights.