Contesting Copyright: A History of Intellectual Property in East Central Europe and the Balkans

The creative sector, including the cultural industry, is key for today’s economy. Copyright has the capacity to x the roles and tasks of the actors involved and determine the direction of cash ows within this sector. The study of the evolution of copyright helps understand and adjust the regulation and commercialization of creative labor. Augusta Dimou provides a thoroughly researched, interdisciplinary and comparative study of the historical development of copyright regimes in three countries – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. She examines the function and signi cance of copyright in the institutionalization, development, and regulation of modern culture in East Central Europe and the Balkans during the diverse political regimes of the modern era, and at the interface between the various nationalization and globalization processes of the 20th century.

Augusta Dimou specializes in the Modern History of East and Southeast Europe from a comparative, transnational perspective. She is Privatdozentin at the Institute for the Study of Culture of the University of Leipzig and has held academic positions at the University of Ioannina, Humboldt University in Berlin, IOS-Regensburg and GWZO in Leipzig. She has been a fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’ Homme (Paris), IWM (Vienna), FRIAS (Freiburg), CAS (Sofia) and New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest.