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Modern civil society, nonprofits, and foundations are structured to manage the donation of time and money and regulations codify the limits of their use. Going forward, digital data and infrastructure will become additional philanthropic resources. Philanthropic experiments with digital assets require new rules of ownership, shifts in governance practices, and networked institutions. This chapter uses a case study of the Digital Public Library of America to theorize about governance and policy implications for nonprofits and philanthropy in a digital age.

The licensing model has important implications for public libraries. The practice of library lending has depended heavily on the exhaustion principle. But in the context of ebook lending, exhaustion has not given libraries the same freedom they used to enjoy over physical copies. The restrictions imposed by copyright holders allow expansive vendor control over library ebook lending. They not only infringe upon library patrons’ freedom to borrow or access library ebook collection, but also diminish the libraries’ ability to discharge their important cultural functions. The prevalence of digital copies makes it harder for libraries to preserve works that lack perceived economic value or that are subject to censorship. It also threatens the privacy of library patrons and stifles innovation.

In his introduction to a volume titled Companion to the Digital Humanities (2004), a pioneering figure in the field, Roberto Busa, looked at the challenges posed by globalization to digital humanities.¹ Busa was mainly referring to the narrow linguistic aspect of the problem when he sketched a vision for a virtual project he called ...

A South African by birth, white, of German ancestry, fluent in Afrikaans, Helena Pohlandt-McCormick spent six months in her native country in 1993 and a full year in 1994 studying the Soweto uprising. During that time, she assiduously examined the relevant archives but was unable to find any of the posters she knew the marching students carried: … From the transcripts and correspondence of the Cillié Commission I knew that the Commission had received, from the police, many posters and banners that had been confiscated during various student marches in 1976. None of them would have fit into a traditional archive document box and, though mentioned on the list of evidence associated with the Cillié Commission, they were initially not to be found. I continued to request that archivists search the repositories—without success. Until, one day, perhaps exasperated by my persistence or wanting to finally prove to me that there was nothing to be found in the space associated with K345, the archival designator of my Soweto materials, one of the archivists relented and asked me to accompany her into the vaults in order to help her search for these artifacts of the uprising! To be sure, there were no posters to be found in the shelf space that housed the roughly nine hundred boxes of evidence associated with the Cillié Commission. But then, as my disappointed eyes swept the simultaneously ominous and tantalizing interior of the vault, I saw a piece of board protruding over the topmost edge of the shelf. There, almost 9 feet into the air, in the shadowy space on top of the document shelves, lay a pile of posters and banners… . We can understand Pohlandt-McCormick’s mounting sense of excitement. It is not just the discovery itself; it is the sense of being in touch with the past—literally in touch. It is the knowledge that no photograph can do justice to any 3D object, whether it is a collection of posters, a cache of cold fusion memorabilia, or Enrico Fermi’s Nobel medal.

In 1909, an Arabic book was published in Egypt under the title Al-Talmud: asluhu wa-tasalsuluhu wa-adabuhu (The Talmud: Its Origin, Transmission, and Ethics).¹ As will later be discussed in more detail, this volume, containing a translation of the mishnaic tractate Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) was intended to be the first of a multivolume translation of the Talmud into Arabic. However, the chief rabbi of Cairo, R. Raphael Aharon ben Shimon, objected to the book, and this led to its being disregarded by the Jewish public....

This chapter critiques three particular patents cases in the US and EU that were filed in the 1990s by Indian NGOs and the Indian government. The three patents in question were related to neem, turmeric, and basmati. All three cases caused outrage in India because of the perception that the West was ‘stealing’ traditional knowledge from India. This chapter explains the rhetoric and misinformation surrounding all three cases and explores how the media and the government dealt with these issues at a time when awareness about patent law in India was low. These three cases were followed by the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). This chapter explores and critiques the rationale for the TKDL and its efficacy in achieving its stated goals.

As religions become commercialized, gurus who proclaim themselves to be the messengers of gods leave behind fortunes in the form of intellectual property, either as books, or audio and video recordings. Temples too claim trademark rights in symbols representing various deities. Where people are quick to take umbrage at being offended due to religious sentiments, it is not surprising that the Trade Mark Act dealt with issue of trademarks that offended religious sentiments. This chapter discusses related questions such as who has the right to use the names of religious figures in trademarks. Or to whom does the intellectual estate of a spiritual leader belong? Or when does an authority decide that a combination of yoga postures or healing techniques can be legally protected? This chapter discusses issues that represent the challenges that intellectual property law faces in the new age.