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The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
In this enlightening book James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age—today’s heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today’s policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation. Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain—the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson’s philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the “commons of the mind,” Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published November 3, 2008
46 people are currently reading
909 people want to read
About the author
James Boyle
102 books13 followersJames Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the former Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons. His books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind; Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society; Cultural Environmentalism (with Lawrence Lessig); and Bound By Law: Tales from the Public Domain and Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society - Cases & Materials: An Open Casebook (with Jennifer Jenkins).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
January 14, 2010
This book contains one of the best and fairest overviews of the current debate (and a bit on the history) surrounding Intellectual Property Rights that I've seen so far.
IPRs were created in the US to ensure that people would have sufficient incentives to release their private musings, writings or inventions into the public space, giving them a time-limited monopoly on the spread and sale of these works. The main goal, to stress the point, was to make sure that after this initial period, the additions would end up in the PD for everyone to play with.
The author points out the untenability of "moral rights"-based defences of IPR, (i.e., the 'single genius author' is a myth, as everyone "stands on the shoulders of giants", or at least the 'giant' referred to as the Public Domain) it basically argues for evidence-based IP legislation, and to that end it gives a number of arguments that together fundamentally attack the idea that there is such a thing as a "tragedy of the commons", and especially that government-instituted private monopolies are the only way to prevent that situation from occurring. Once one recognizes that the 'tragedy' argument doesn't hold water, it becomes very hard to keep arguing that copyright extensions (never mind retroactive ones, for works for which the authors already had enough of an incentive in the current copyright system to create them) are necessary to secure continued development of 'new' works.
Culture is the aggregate of all inherited thought of the previous generations (after the invention of writing, anyway), and the reason we can live in a moderately technological society today is because everyone was free to build upon the inventions of those who came before. By locking those inventions away for 100+ years, or, in the case of patents, by allowing companies to prevent competitors from entering a market by patenting just about anything for use against any competitors if/when this is deemed necessary, all that's happening is that we're slowing the rate at which new things can be thought up.
IPRs were created in the US to ensure that people would have sufficient incentives to release their private musings, writings or inventions into the public space, giving them a time-limited monopoly on the spread and sale of these works. The main goal, to stress the point, was to make sure that after this initial period, the additions would end up in the PD for everyone to play with.
The author points out the untenability of "moral rights"-based defences of IPR, (i.e., the 'single genius author' is a myth, as everyone "stands on the shoulders of giants", or at least the 'giant' referred to as the Public Domain) it basically argues for evidence-based IP legislation, and to that end it gives a number of arguments that together fundamentally attack the idea that there is such a thing as a "tragedy of the commons", and especially that government-instituted private monopolies are the only way to prevent that situation from occurring. Once one recognizes that the 'tragedy' argument doesn't hold water, it becomes very hard to keep arguing that copyright extensions (never mind retroactive ones, for works for which the authors already had enough of an incentive in the current copyright system to create them) are necessary to secure continued development of 'new' works.
Culture is the aggregate of all inherited thought of the previous generations (after the invention of writing, anyway), and the reason we can live in a moderately technological society today is because everyone was free to build upon the inventions of those who came before. By locking those inventions away for 100+ years, or, in the case of patents, by allowing companies to prevent competitors from entering a market by patenting just about anything for use against any competitors if/when this is deemed necessary, all that's happening is that we're slowing the rate at which new things can be thought up.
March 6, 2014
Two 1 hour live interviews about this book. Don'cha just love it when an author makes you smile as you are learning.
1 - Why Intellectual Property
2 - Thomas Jefferson Writes a Letter
3 - The Second Enclosure Movement
4 - The Internet Threat
5 - The Farmers Tale: An Allegory
6 - I got A Mashup
7 - The Enclosure of Science and Technology
8 - A Creative Commons
9 - An Evidence: Free Zone
10 -An Environmentalist for Information.
The web was created for science and it works for porn, shoes, twits, farce and books but really stymies science information because of bizarre intelligence bars.
Lot of discussion about the beauty of Gutenberg Project within the book world and the thoughts of using this template to embrace other platforms. Yes!! Much to mull over here, really worth a look.
February 26, 2012
The public domain is a strange and perplexing thing, under assault from forces that would corporatise and privatise as much of our intellectual, cultural and social life as possible, although a domain that is increasingly hard to identify and define, but a concept that shapes and weaves its way through (if both are possible) a very large amount of our contemporary politics. Debates about the public domain are central to many of our discussions about technology, scientific and cultural development and innovation, ideas and scholarship, and so much more, yet it remains ill defined, poorly understood and increasingly eroded.
This is the terrain that Boyle steps out into this engaging and welcome intervention into these debates. He does three things convincingly: 1) he defends the existence of intellectual property; 2) he demonstrates why it should be retained as a temporary right only; and 3) he defines what is not property and therefore what is (or should be) in the commons, the public domain. It is this third element of his argument that makes this such a welcome text. In doing so he, in his own words, makes nine key arguments about intellectual property and while I may not agree with all of his positions and the detail of his case his nine arguments have helped me, as a non-lawyer, make sense of many of the issues that I am trying to grapple with in my paid work as an academic in an increasingly commercialised, commodified and marketised higher education system.
His nine central arguments are:
First: intellectual property is not the same as ‘real’, material or physical property – it is, in the jargon of the lawyer and economist, both nonexcludable (it may be used at no cost by several people at once) and nonrival (once one ‘text’ has been produced it may be reproduced cheaply to satisfy many users);
Second: the limitations imposed on intellectual property rights are as important as the existence of those rights themselves;
Third: the public domain has a vital role to play in both innovation and culture;
Fourth: continually expanding intellectual property rights will not bring about more innovation in either science or culture;
Fifth: recent developments in intellectual property amount to a second enclosure movement as, if not more, troubling than the enclosure (privatisation) of land in Europe from the 14th through the 18th centuries;
Sixth: the continual extension of copyright, including retrospectively, locks up most of 20th century culture and thinking while protecting only a tiny proportion of it that is commercially viable;
Seventh: policy needs to consider both the benefits and costs to intellectual property rights holders;
Eighth: without careful and explicit limitations on and exemptions in copyright control over content risks becoming control over the medium of transmission; and
Ninth: the Internet should make us revisit and re-evaluate production to consider the power of both non-proprietary and distributed production.
This summary is drawn from pg 205 – at the opening of perhaps the most damning chapter in the book where Boyle outlines the ideological, that is the evidence-free, basis of almost all developments in intellectual property law and policy in both the US and Europe (one of the welcome elements of the book for me as a non-US- based reader is that Boyle attempts to address both US and other jurisdictions making clear the ways that developments on both sides of the North Atlantic (and elsewhere) have impacts well beyond their national contexts.
It is a telling comment, I suspect on my level of geekdom, that I find intellectual property issues are becoming more and more interesting, but then I do not seem to be alone in that. There is a growing activism among indigenous peoples around such developments as the patenting of genome sequences, traditional medicines and plant types where they, quite properly, see these moves as attempts by corporate groups to commercialise ‘traditional knowledge’. At the same time, philosophers du jour such as Žižek and to a lesser extent Badiou see struggles over then new enclosure of the commons as the essential political struggles of the time. Žižek for instance (in both First as Tragedy, Then As Farce and less obviously in In Defence of Lost Causes) points to the enclosure of the commons of culture, of external nature and internal nature, in his words, as the principal contradictions of our time.
The challenge, for me, of this growing interest in intellectual property is that I find myself reading lawyers more often than is probably good for me; although I really appreciate their attention to detail and the meaning of specific words there is a certain form of legal discourse that I find difficult to handle. That problem means that this book is all the more delightful – a legal scholar aware of the limits of his discourse and who sets out to write for a general audience (that breed that over 50 years ago Eric Hobsbawm called “that theoretical construct, the intelligent and educated citizen, who … wishes to understand how and why the world has come to be what it is today and whither it is going.” – on the first page of The Age of Revolution). Boyle addresses that audience well (if I may be allowed the indulgence to claim that status) and makes clear just why we should care.
And for those of us who are interested in how the popular politics of intellectual property might develop, he also makes a compelling case to consider the history and development of environmental politics since the 1950s as a broad coalition of interest, pressure and activist groups with a broad mutual and common concern amid all their differences. I’m putting this alongside Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s excellent Planned Obsolescence (see http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...) as essential steps in my current thinking about these issues and how, as scholars, we should be responding to these shifts in our world of work.
Oh, and it is pleasing to note that Yale UP agreed to it being issued under a Creative Commons license at http://www.thepublicdomain.org/download/.
This is the terrain that Boyle steps out into this engaging and welcome intervention into these debates. He does three things convincingly: 1) he defends the existence of intellectual property; 2) he demonstrates why it should be retained as a temporary right only; and 3) he defines what is not property and therefore what is (or should be) in the commons, the public domain. It is this third element of his argument that makes this such a welcome text. In doing so he, in his own words, makes nine key arguments about intellectual property and while I may not agree with all of his positions and the detail of his case his nine arguments have helped me, as a non-lawyer, make sense of many of the issues that I am trying to grapple with in my paid work as an academic in an increasingly commercialised, commodified and marketised higher education system.
His nine central arguments are:
First: intellectual property is not the same as ‘real’, material or physical property – it is, in the jargon of the lawyer and economist, both nonexcludable (it may be used at no cost by several people at once) and nonrival (once one ‘text’ has been produced it may be reproduced cheaply to satisfy many users);
Second: the limitations imposed on intellectual property rights are as important as the existence of those rights themselves;
Third: the public domain has a vital role to play in both innovation and culture;
Fourth: continually expanding intellectual property rights will not bring about more innovation in either science or culture;
Fifth: recent developments in intellectual property amount to a second enclosure movement as, if not more, troubling than the enclosure (privatisation) of land in Europe from the 14th through the 18th centuries;
Sixth: the continual extension of copyright, including retrospectively, locks up most of 20th century culture and thinking while protecting only a tiny proportion of it that is commercially viable;
Seventh: policy needs to consider both the benefits and costs to intellectual property rights holders;
Eighth: without careful and explicit limitations on and exemptions in copyright control over content risks becoming control over the medium of transmission; and
Ninth: the Internet should make us revisit and re-evaluate production to consider the power of both non-proprietary and distributed production.
This summary is drawn from pg 205 – at the opening of perhaps the most damning chapter in the book where Boyle outlines the ideological, that is the evidence-free, basis of almost all developments in intellectual property law and policy in both the US and Europe (one of the welcome elements of the book for me as a non-US- based reader is that Boyle attempts to address both US and other jurisdictions making clear the ways that developments on both sides of the North Atlantic (and elsewhere) have impacts well beyond their national contexts.
It is a telling comment, I suspect on my level of geekdom, that I find intellectual property issues are becoming more and more interesting, but then I do not seem to be alone in that. There is a growing activism among indigenous peoples around such developments as the patenting of genome sequences, traditional medicines and plant types where they, quite properly, see these moves as attempts by corporate groups to commercialise ‘traditional knowledge’. At the same time, philosophers du jour such as Žižek and to a lesser extent Badiou see struggles over then new enclosure of the commons as the essential political struggles of the time. Žižek for instance (in both First as Tragedy, Then As Farce and less obviously in In Defence of Lost Causes) points to the enclosure of the commons of culture, of external nature and internal nature, in his words, as the principal contradictions of our time.
The challenge, for me, of this growing interest in intellectual property is that I find myself reading lawyers more often than is probably good for me; although I really appreciate their attention to detail and the meaning of specific words there is a certain form of legal discourse that I find difficult to handle. That problem means that this book is all the more delightful – a legal scholar aware of the limits of his discourse and who sets out to write for a general audience (that breed that over 50 years ago Eric Hobsbawm called “that theoretical construct, the intelligent and educated citizen, who … wishes to understand how and why the world has come to be what it is today and whither it is going.” – on the first page of The Age of Revolution). Boyle addresses that audience well (if I may be allowed the indulgence to claim that status) and makes clear just why we should care.
And for those of us who are interested in how the popular politics of intellectual property might develop, he also makes a compelling case to consider the history and development of environmental politics since the 1950s as a broad coalition of interest, pressure and activist groups with a broad mutual and common concern amid all their differences. I’m putting this alongside Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s excellent Planned Obsolescence (see http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...) as essential steps in my current thinking about these issues and how, as scholars, we should be responding to these shifts in our world of work.
Oh, and it is pleasing to note that Yale UP agreed to it being issued under a Creative Commons license at http://www.thepublicdomain.org/download/.
May 10, 2011
James Boyle retains a personable voice throughout the book if he sometimes dwells on some points longer than my layman's attention can focus on them. He introduces the reader not just to current intellectual property law but also to the more abstract notion of what it is we're trying to protect and what we're trying to remote through the use of copyrights and patents.
One of the most interesting points that Boyle brings up is how, because of the low cost of copying in our society, the use of technology is falling more under the stranglehold of copyright. That idea alone should be enough to motivate people to read the book. You'll learn about intellectual property, yes, but you'll also start to realize its importance to our culture and why it's time to reform some of it.
One of the most interesting points that Boyle brings up is how, because of the low cost of copying in our society, the use of technology is falling more under the stranglehold of copyright. That idea alone should be enough to motivate people to read the book. You'll learn about intellectual property, yes, but you'll also start to realize its importance to our culture and why it's time to reform some of it.
September 23, 2012
In July of 2012, after taking a tour of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, I visited the Library of Congress across the street. The last time I was there was more than 20 years ago, and since I am now a school librarian, I was excited to see the largest library in the world. I was sorely disappointed. On my previous visit, one could walk through the ornate lobby directly into the main reading room. Now casual visitors may only climb a set of narrow stairs to a high balcony that overlooks the reading room, and is separated from it by thick, presumably bulletproof, glass.
In "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" author James Boyle recounts showing the Library of Congress website to his grandson who then asked him, "Where do you click to get the book?" Sadly, the answer is that free access to most of the creative works of the past century are locked up by copyright law. Works that are commercially unavailable, even works whose ownership cannot be traced, are still prohibited by law from being distributed. In this digital world, the Library of Congress could be the greatest source of freely available music, literature, and information the world has ever known. Instead it is a vault, locked down because corporate "content owners" have convinced the politicians that their "intellectual property" needs ever greater legal protection.
Early in the book, Boyle points out that, historically, copyright (and patents) is the exception, not the general rule. Nowadays, copyright seems to have become the rule and "fair use" is considered to be an exception. This is a dangerous reversal of priorities that continues to have serious repercussions in education, science, and technology, as well as music and literature. This book is an important "must read" for librarians, educators, and others involved in intellectual and creative pursuits. We must speak up and defend the Commons before it is completely locked up and sold to the highest bidder.
In "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" author James Boyle recounts showing the Library of Congress website to his grandson who then asked him, "Where do you click to get the book?" Sadly, the answer is that free access to most of the creative works of the past century are locked up by copyright law. Works that are commercially unavailable, even works whose ownership cannot be traced, are still prohibited by law from being distributed. In this digital world, the Library of Congress could be the greatest source of freely available music, literature, and information the world has ever known. Instead it is a vault, locked down because corporate "content owners" have convinced the politicians that their "intellectual property" needs ever greater legal protection.
Early in the book, Boyle points out that, historically, copyright (and patents) is the exception, not the general rule. Nowadays, copyright seems to have become the rule and "fair use" is considered to be an exception. This is a dangerous reversal of priorities that continues to have serious repercussions in education, science, and technology, as well as music and literature. This book is an important "must read" for librarians, educators, and others involved in intellectual and creative pursuits. We must speak up and defend the Commons before it is completely locked up and sold to the highest bidder.
June 1, 2009
A warning about the dangers of overly aggressive intellectual property policy
If the current regulatory mindset regarding intellectual property had existed when scientist Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web in 1989, the Internet might never have grown into the remarkable communication, entertainment and archival medium that it is today. Jazz and many other forms of music might never have come into being if governments were as strict decades ago about copyright law as they are now. Today, warns author James Boyle, huge swaths of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage – books, photographs, films, musical recordings – are locked up in governmental and private libraries and unavailable for distribution to the general public. Why? No one can identify the copyright holders or their heirs to obtain permission to copy them. The number of such “orphan works” is staggering: more than 95% of all books ever printed, and equally high percentages of film and music. Should the government wall off these potential treasures to protect the rights of nameless individuals, most of whom either don’t care or are dead? Boyle, an expert on intellectual property law, thinks not, and he explains why in this heated discussion about trends in his field. getAbstract recommends his illuminating book to writers, inventors, and anyone else involved in the creation of content, as well as to managers and executives who wish both to protect proprietary information and to encourage innovation.
If the current regulatory mindset regarding intellectual property had existed when scientist Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web in 1989, the Internet might never have grown into the remarkable communication, entertainment and archival medium that it is today. Jazz and many other forms of music might never have come into being if governments were as strict decades ago about copyright law as they are now. Today, warns author James Boyle, huge swaths of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage – books, photographs, films, musical recordings – are locked up in governmental and private libraries and unavailable for distribution to the general public. Why? No one can identify the copyright holders or their heirs to obtain permission to copy them. The number of such “orphan works” is staggering: more than 95% of all books ever printed, and equally high percentages of film and music. Should the government wall off these potential treasures to protect the rights of nameless individuals, most of whom either don’t care or are dead? Boyle, an expert on intellectual property law, thinks not, and he explains why in this heated discussion about trends in his field. getAbstract recommends his illuminating book to writers, inventors, and anyone else involved in the creation of content, as well as to managers and executives who wish both to protect proprietary information and to encourage innovation.
February 13, 2013
I read this, as it was selected by people participating in http://freedombookclub.com as their Book of the Month for October 2012.
I enjoy reading about intellectual property. I find the topic fascinating. But other books I have read clearly delineate that copyright/patents are either good or bad. Boyle's book makes a case that those protections are sometimes necessary. His argument was pretty convincing in some respects.
Boyle's main concern is that copyrights and patents are being misused to block things from entering into the public domain. I agreed very much with this. The author cites legal cases, laws, silly patents granted, and how our knowledge as a species grows upon the public domain.
As I was reading this at my place of employment a group of student athletes came into to purchase food. One of them asked what I was reading. When I showed him, he was amazed: what I was reading for pleasure was assigned reading for him. I hope that many people consider what Boyle has to say. This book is accessible for most everybody. It engages the reader in a studious, yet often humorous way, citing many an inane patent granted, but sets out seriously to address the misuse of intellectual property today.
I enjoy reading about intellectual property. I find the topic fascinating. But other books I have read clearly delineate that copyright/patents are either good or bad. Boyle's book makes a case that those protections are sometimes necessary. His argument was pretty convincing in some respects.
Boyle's main concern is that copyrights and patents are being misused to block things from entering into the public domain. I agreed very much with this. The author cites legal cases, laws, silly patents granted, and how our knowledge as a species grows upon the public domain.
As I was reading this at my place of employment a group of student athletes came into to purchase food. One of them asked what I was reading. When I showed him, he was amazed: what I was reading for pleasure was assigned reading for him. I hope that many people consider what Boyle has to say. This book is accessible for most everybody. It engages the reader in a studious, yet often humorous way, citing many an inane patent granted, but sets out seriously to address the misuse of intellectual property today.
April 28, 2009
Absolutely outstanding. Perhaps my favorite of recently read books in this genre, but that's probably as much due to the fact that I'm very clear on the arguments now (and in agreement), so I could just enjoy the content. (all of them are fantastic) Professor Boyle's examples and reasoning are brilliant and powerful, however. He clearly states his concerns with recent (20th century) attempts to enclose and limit the rights of fair use and the public domain, and he also provides potential solutions and cogent arguments against. A literal joy to read.
Want to read
December 15, 2008It's about copyright, or perhaps I should say copyleft. It's for work.
December 2, 2016
Yes, I have read several on this topic, as it is a topic that I am passionate about. This book is a down-to-earth look at what intellectual property is (it is an artificial right created by governments, not a natural right as many of us believe), what it is for (to encourage innovation, not to discourage competition), and where it is headed (toward longer and stronger rights for IP owners and their descendants).
It addresses the many misconceptions that most people have about "stealing" ideas, expanding rights, and fair use. It describes the problematic approach that many turn to of using analogies to the physical world when talking about ideas. It suggests a solution based on a concept of the "environment" that helped sustainability become mainstream. And it does this all with a balanced perspective. The author states repeatedly that he is not anti-intellectual property. It can be very useful and very important, when our founding fathers' cautions regarding its reach are heeded.
Although occasionally you may find spots that are a bit technical and difficult to fully understand, keep going. As someone with no professional background in law or intellectual property, most of this book is fairly simple and easy to understand.
This should be required reading at every public high school, or at the very least, every accredited university. Today's culture has such a biased view on intellectual property, and such a careless attitude towards our intellectual commons that we don't realize how badly things are headed. Individual situations catch our ire occasionally; bad software patents, or patents on DNA sequences, or patent trolls, but we fail to realize that these problems are systemic, and part of a much larger problem of mindshare and mindset.
I would implore everyone to read this book. Become educated on this portion of our constitution and its current state. The only way to combat our slide towards greater and greater government-granted monopoly rights is to educate the public, the lawmakers, lawyers, and yes, lobbyists, CEOs, and the men and women in our judicial system, especially judges and juries.
I only wish the author could update and re-release the book every couple of years, as things today are even worse than when the book was published.
Related media includes:
FREE: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson talks about today's digital "free" market, how it is possible, and how it works. This overlaps greatly on the topic of the Public Domain.
Against Intellectual Property, by N. Stephan Kinsella gives a more negative view about the benefits of Intellectual Property and proposes that most or all IP rights should be either eliminated or severely culled.
Everything is a Remix, by Kirby Ferguson, is a video series outlining some of the very same issues and examples and arguments as this book.
It addresses the many misconceptions that most people have about "stealing" ideas, expanding rights, and fair use. It describes the problematic approach that many turn to of using analogies to the physical world when talking about ideas. It suggests a solution based on a concept of the "environment" that helped sustainability become mainstream. And it does this all with a balanced perspective. The author states repeatedly that he is not anti-intellectual property. It can be very useful and very important, when our founding fathers' cautions regarding its reach are heeded.
Although occasionally you may find spots that are a bit technical and difficult to fully understand, keep going. As someone with no professional background in law or intellectual property, most of this book is fairly simple and easy to understand.
This should be required reading at every public high school, or at the very least, every accredited university. Today's culture has such a biased view on intellectual property, and such a careless attitude towards our intellectual commons that we don't realize how badly things are headed. Individual situations catch our ire occasionally; bad software patents, or patents on DNA sequences, or patent trolls, but we fail to realize that these problems are systemic, and part of a much larger problem of mindshare and mindset.
I would implore everyone to read this book. Become educated on this portion of our constitution and its current state. The only way to combat our slide towards greater and greater government-granted monopoly rights is to educate the public, the lawmakers, lawyers, and yes, lobbyists, CEOs, and the men and women in our judicial system, especially judges and juries.
I only wish the author could update and re-release the book every couple of years, as things today are even worse than when the book was published.
Related media includes:
FREE: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson talks about today's digital "free" market, how it is possible, and how it works. This overlaps greatly on the topic of the Public Domain.
Against Intellectual Property, by N. Stephan Kinsella gives a more negative view about the benefits of Intellectual Property and proposes that most or all IP rights should be either eliminated or severely culled.
Everything is a Remix, by Kirby Ferguson, is a video series outlining some of the very same issues and examples and arguments as this book.
August 25, 2013
This book gives a nuanced and thorough account of the issues surrounding intellectual property vs. the public domain. It does an excellent job of arguing for less restrictive intellectual property laws without demonizing strong intellectual property advocates. In fact, it does a very fine job of explaining the rationales of strong intellectual property law advocates. Boyle also does a very good job of showing what can be lost in terms of suppression of innovation when copyright and patent laws are too strong.
I particularly liked chapter 6's discussion of mashups and derived works. Specifically, the discussion of the genealogy of Ray Charles' work "I Got a Woman" and how the law changed with regards to copyright of musical works was particularly enlightening. Current copyright laws would have made "I got a woman" at minimum a violation of copyright and at worst something that would have never would have been composed due to the disincentives that current copyright entails. This chapter makes clear how hard it is to draw the line as to when copying ends and originality begins.
I found the work extremely cogent but then in my case Boyle was preaching to the choir. As a librarian I have long known that the purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive for creativity by allowing the creator to exclusively profit from their creations for a limited period of time. Once the opportunity for a fair profit has ended, all works should enter the public domain because that in turn encourages even more creativity by allowing others to freely build upon the earlier creator's ideas. Further, copyright has never been about theft of ideas but about copying ideas. Ideas are nonrivalous, that is, if I copy your idea I have not stolen it because you still have your idea. This is what makes intellectual property different from tangible property. So yes, copyright and patent law are necessary to encourage creativity, but once the opportunity for a fair profit has been given, copyright and patent law get in the way of further innovation and free and fair use by others.
I particularly liked chapter 6's discussion of mashups and derived works. Specifically, the discussion of the genealogy of Ray Charles' work "I Got a Woman" and how the law changed with regards to copyright of musical works was particularly enlightening. Current copyright laws would have made "I got a woman" at minimum a violation of copyright and at worst something that would have never would have been composed due to the disincentives that current copyright entails. This chapter makes clear how hard it is to draw the line as to when copying ends and originality begins.
I found the work extremely cogent but then in my case Boyle was preaching to the choir. As a librarian I have long known that the purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive for creativity by allowing the creator to exclusively profit from their creations for a limited period of time. Once the opportunity for a fair profit has ended, all works should enter the public domain because that in turn encourages even more creativity by allowing others to freely build upon the earlier creator's ideas. Further, copyright has never been about theft of ideas but about copying ideas. Ideas are nonrivalous, that is, if I copy your idea I have not stolen it because you still have your idea. This is what makes intellectual property different from tangible property. So yes, copyright and patent law are necessary to encourage creativity, but once the opportunity for a fair profit has been given, copyright and patent law get in the way of further innovation and free and fair use by others.
January 22, 2011
Accessible, top-shelf, clear-minded talk about intellectual property law from one of the leading lights of its liberalization. Most people reading that sentence will turn off. If you survived it, you should probably read the book, because it talks about problems that concern you personally: you, who write reviews on Goodreads and post vacation photos on Flickr and otherwise become an author several times a day. The book is centrally about how the bloat of the copyright system, born of misguided legislation, poor judicial decisions, and corporate self-interest, makes it harder for authors and consumers like us to do what we do without infringing on something. While not condemning all intellectual property law as bad, Boyle calls for us to realize the importance of preserving the public domain: loosely, the realm of ideas and expressions that are free for everyone to draw on. He goes from first principles to relevant and modern conclusions, and though he presents himself with clarity and precision, you don't need any legal training to understand him. If you read only one book about intellectual property in your life, this is the one.
January 30, 2010
An excellent book on the current state of IP law, including some history, policy overviews, and even some case studies. Very accessible and readable. The author even lets his sense of humor show through. Definitely not a dry legal text.
I liked the emphasis on the public domain and why it needs to be protected. As the author admits, the enclosure analogy doesn't work perfectly, as intangible property is different from tangible property. But the author covers this point very well, and elaborates on why they must be treated differently. Also appreciated his ideas for further reading in the endnotes. A solid 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 because I would recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.
I liked the emphasis on the public domain and why it needs to be protected. As the author admits, the enclosure analogy doesn't work perfectly, as intangible property is different from tangible property. But the author covers this point very well, and elaborates on why they must be treated differently. Also appreciated his ideas for further reading in the endnotes. A solid 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 because I would recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.
February 4, 2012
This is a brilliant presentation of the evolution and influences of our intellectual property right laws and patent systems as they developed in America. Its written so that its easy to follow, and shows the struggle between innovation and our capitalist model, where they converge, and where they are set against each other. While its especially relevant now, its the notions of how information is allowed to flow through our society is and always will be important. Its also free - the entire work - at http://www.thepublicdomain.org/. I've read this 4 times now and it just keeps getting more relevant and import that people understand this issue - as that flow of information dictates business, economics, cultural, and material choices we must all abide by.
December 22, 2008
The author makes wonderful use of examples in this book to help bring clarity to the issues around intellectual property. Clarity is just what is needed for such a vague subject. The words intellectual property probably don't mean a lot to most people. This book can help people to understand intellectual property and the damaging effects of letting laws that protect it run rampant. It also does a good job of identifying some sensible guidelines to identify when those laws are needed. I would hope that every judge and elected official would read this book. The future of our freedoms would benefit greatly from it.
February 3, 2009
Ok, a book about copyright probably doesn't sound very interesting to the non-lawyer, non-librarian audience. But, as James Boyle argues in this very accessible book, issues of intellectual property rights are becoming increasingly relevant to the average person going about her way absorbing and creating contemporary culture. Whether you're interested in music, literature, or biotechnology, you should read this book.
November 25, 2014
This book introduced me to the concept of "cultural environmentalism," and the extent to which intellectual property laws are restricting the flow of ideas rather than improving them. In the same way that informed citizens and voters need a basic understanding of the economy, the digital age requires an understanding of intellectual property. I will make it a point to keep abreast of that area of the law.
February 17, 2009
Prof. Boyle ought to be emulated by more public intellectuals. He makes the somewhat arcane topic of intellectual property accessible and interesting. The Public Domain is a well-written, highly persuasive account of how the blind expansion of IP rights has cheated consumers, impeded technological progress and stifled artistic creativity.
November 4, 2011
Copyright has become increasingly restrictive over the past 200 years. Initially imagined as a way to provide the spread of knowledge, it has morphed into a lock down on sharing. As the curator of an Institutional Repository, this reality is driven home on a daily basis. We need to educate, inform and work for Open Access, and this book helps to prepare us to do just that.
August 23, 2012
Very short review: EVERYONE needs to read this book. This is the best, sanest, clearest explanation of the point of copyright and how we ought to think about its role in the modern world.
Want to read
May 18, 2009WQ review, also look into other books by author
May 12, 2015
one my favourite books love the way he explains everything
May 17, 2015
Well-written overview of intellectual property issues. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.
January 5, 2025
Boyle lays out cohesive, well-researched arguments on why the public domain is important and copyrights should have limited terms. He explains historical writings and theories on intellectual property as well as more recent examples of copyright cases, such as Kanye West and Jamie Foxx borrowing from a Ray Charles song in "Gold Digger" (this story had me riveted as a copyright and pop culture nerd). I especially appreciated how he touched on the complications of music copyright, an area I am still learning about.
December 3, 2016
Has achieved the impossible: a readable book about intellectual property in the United States. Boyle argues that the environmental movement offers a useful model for bringing together disparate stakeholders in designing a better IP system. The first step is to make visible the public domain, the way the concept of "environment" was made visible and used to shape policy, rally support. This book represents an attempt at such a first step, to my understanding.
January 23, 2022
The writing here comes across as overly parenthetical at times, to the point that I found myself actively bored in the middle section. The author is also frustratingly even-handed and pragmatic (not exactly a criticism, I know). That aside, the overall message – that the public domain is more than the absence of something – does land, managing to be inspiring, unique, and well worth the trouble of reading.
August 14, 2022
I especially liked the reminder that the constitutional purpose of copyrights and patents was to stimulate sharing and encourage the development of new works of art and inventions. The current trend towards extending protection terms is completely contrary to the point of the protection -- what incentive can there be for the creator years after their death?
June 2, 2011
Not necessarily the book that I would pick up to read for fun but it contained lots of useful and at times interesting information. I think that James Boyle does a great job in engaging the reader. I found the best way to read his book was not to read it from front to back but to just jump right in the center and bounce around from there. It might have been that I was reading it in an online version so my attention span was not the longest.
He made some very good points on the public domain and where we should draw the lines on intellectual property and when we should allow people to have creative freedom. I really enjoyed the spots when he discussed how we often build upon the past. Music artists, or stories, or really any other form of creative work almost always has built upon an idea from the past. We are borrowing all the time. It is just interesting to think how much to too much borrowing and when can we keep sharing that information?
He made some very good points on the public domain and where we should draw the lines on intellectual property and when we should allow people to have creative freedom. I really enjoyed the spots when he discussed how we often build upon the past. Music artists, or stories, or really any other form of creative work almost always has built upon an idea from the past. We are borrowing all the time. It is just interesting to think how much to too much borrowing and when can we keep sharing that information?
March 11, 2013
Good historical background concerning the public domain, copyright law, and patents, and how they apply to books, movie, music, and the internet in the 21st century - including talking about legal cases involving sampling of music, youtube, the evolving definition of fair use, orphaned works (works still under copyright but without a known copyright holder), and more. The first chapter gives an overview concerning intellectual property and the second chapter is "Thomas Jefferson Writes a Letter," going into early U.S. thought on the matter. I'd strongly recommend this book to someone with little knowledge on these issues. If you are already somewhat informed on the subject, then this is worth picking up, but you may well find yourself able to skim through many of the later chapters - still information to glean, but meant more for someone new to the subject. This book was published in 2006, but the information within is still fairly current.
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