Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyrights Made the Online World

by Gerardo Con Diaz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300251265
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/17/2025
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gerardo Con Díaz is 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.

Editorial Reviews

A brilliant encore to his Software Rights, Con Díaz’s Everyone Breaks These Laws skillfully analyzes copyright law and online culture. Exploring privacy, property, and power, it is an essential historical scaffolding informing new challenges with copyright and AI.”— Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry

“Everyone Breaks These Laws is an exciting, innovative, and sorely needed book examining the role of copyright in shaping internet culture. Con Díaz argues convincingly that a deep engagement with copyright is essential to understanding the internet’s past development, present condition, and potential futures.”—Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media

“Everyone Breaks These Laws is a triumph of form and substance. By tracking a series of copyright lawsuits, the book shows how the internet’s history has shaped what we experience online, from the age of person-to-person file-sharing to Google image-search to our current AI image-tools. Yet it reads like a pal explaining things to you in a way that is on the level yet lively. Con Díaz trusts his readers to come to their own conclusions about the proper balance between creativity and ownership.”—Ken Alder, author of The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

From the Publisher