The Public Domain

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.

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"'Boyle is one of the world's major thinkers on the centrality of the public domain to the production of knowledge and culture. He offers a comprehensive and biting critique of where our copyright and patent policy has gone, and prescriptions for how we can begin to rebalance our law and practice. It is the first book I would give to anyone who wants to understand the causes, consequences, and solutions in the debates over copyrights, patents, and the public domain of the past decade and a half.' Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard Law School."

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James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Professor Boyle is also the Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons, and the co-founder of Science Commons. He serves on the board of the Public Library of Science and on the advisory board of Public Knowledge. In 2003 Professor Boyle won the World Technology Network Award for Law for his work on the public domain and the "second enclosure movement" that threatens it. He is the author of 'Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society', and the editor of 'Critical Legal Studies, Collected Papers on the Public Domain and Cultural Environmentalism @ 10' (with Larry Lessig.) His more recent books include 'Bound By Law', a co-authored "graphic novel" about the effects of intellectual property on documentary film. 'The Shakespeare Chronicles', a novel, and 'The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind' which was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. He writes a regular online column for the Financial Times's New Economy Policy Forum.

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