The Information Defense Industry: A History

FAIN: FEL-267420-20

Adrian Dominic Johns
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)

Research and writing leading to a book on the history of individual privacy and intellectual property from the Renaissance to the present.

The information defense industry is the enterprise that works to uphold information and intellectual property in today’s world. A composite global enterprise involving major corporations, policing institutions, and public agencies, it uses technology, enforcement, litigation, and lobbying to combat counterfeiting and piracy of all kinds. The industry has coalesced in the last 50 years out of disparate forces that had existed for centuries. It now plays a major, but largely unacknowledged, role in shaping the information society itself. I propose writing the first history of this industry. Starting with the guild practices of the European Renaissance, it will reveal the long and contentious process that has led from them to today’s sophisticated enterprise. My book should help us understand how the defining issues of our information politics – those concerning privacy, security, authenticity, and property – attained their current form, and thereby help us devise ways of tackling them.