1 - Introduction

Summary

This chapter introduces and outlines the structure of the book and its argument.It begins with an extended look at litigation between two rival religious sects – the Worldwide Church of God and the splinter group Philadelphia Church of God – over access to doctrinal texts that the WGC owned the rights to, but that it had renounced.It thus provides a good example of how intellectual property can matter even in the most basic and intimate aspects of our lives.I then situate the book in the context of current literature on the expansion of intellectual property (IP) rights.Rather than note their expansion, I argue that the kind of power expressed in IP is subtly shifting.The chapter then offers a brief synopsis of the core Foucauldian theory behind the book – that power can operate according to different logics. It concludes with an outline of the remainder of the text.