Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s International Copyright Problems
http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/articles/Perfectly-Outrageous-The-Story-of-Gilbert-and-Sullivan/

In 1878, without the protection of international copyright laws like the Berne Convention, more than 100 unauthorized productions of H.M.S. Pinafore were running successfully in the United States. To avoid problems with their next musical, Gilbert and Sullivan premiered The Pirates of Penzance simultaneously in New York and London.

Gilbert, who was an attorney, came up with a clever way to protect his intellectual property. How would you prevent unauthorized international uses of your copyrighted works?

The Tragedy of the Commons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwaNZgY9PCQ&feature=related

In The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin argued that shared resources inevitably tend to be overused and ruined. This video explains the Tragedy argument and some of its flaws.

The Tragedy of the Digital Commons
http://www.openeducation.net/2008/02/21/the-digital-commons-–-left-unregulated-are-we-destined-for-tragedy/

Open Education.net is a site dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today. In this article, the author speculates that an unattended digital commons is destined for the same troubles facing our overfished oceans and our clogged highways.

Is the digital commons on a path similar to that of the town commons as depicted by Hardin?