Democracy is grounded in the open exchange of knowledge and ideas, but its social and political institutions are being systematically destroyed by a flood of monopoly-driven information marketing. Douglas LeMaster explains why the stakes are so high in this detailed, academic work. Democracy, he says, is the only form of social organization that is not exploitive by design. To prove his point, he examines how human history has been dominated by monopolies, such as the priestly monopolies of the great religions, the land monopolies of kings and aristocracies, the marketplace monopolies of capitalists, and most recently-a reinvented and secular information monopoly. While this latest monopoly is still in its formative stage, it's founded on corporate control of expressive rights, copyright, and patent-and it should concern all of us. Join LeMaster as he takes a close look at the latest form of an insidious disease and reveals how these latest