Copyright is everywhere. Not only books but wallpaper, computer programs, pop songs, cartoon characters, snapshots, and cuddly toys are now deemed to be intellectual properties—making copyright a labyrinthine construction of laws with colorful and often baffling rationales covering almost all products of human creativity. But it wasn’t always so. Who Owns This Sentence? is a humorous and enlightening cultural, legal, and global history of the idea that intangible things can be owned and makes a persuasive case for seeing copyright as an engine of inequality in the twenty-first century.

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Copies of Who Owns This Sentence? are available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so.

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About the Authors: David Bellos, the Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is an award-winning translator and biographer and the author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? and The Novel of the Century. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Alexandre Montagu is a practicing lawyer and the founding partner of MontaguLaw, which focuses on intellectual property law, international commercial transactions, and new media commercial and corporate law. He lives in London.

About the Moderator: Mallory Howard is the Assistant Curator of The Mark Twain House & Museum.
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Virtual author programs are supported by Suzanne Hopgood in the memory of former MTH&M Trustee Frank Lord.