• Cover Image

The Public Domain : Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

By: James Boyle

...cost of the scarcest of all resources: time. Amidst a brilliant group of re- search assistants, Jordi Weinstock and David Silverstein stood out. Jordi... ...at would it mean to patent someone’s genes, anyway? Forbidding scientific re- search on the gene without the patent holder’s consent? Forbidding human ... ...g to pay the owner to do so. And then comes the Internet. Right now, you can search for those books or films or songs and have the location of the work... ...d intellectual property would become primary fields of endeavor and the chief engines of the economy. Now they are, and it is no more rational to deny ... ...tion policy, has been replaced. Intel- lectual property is now in and on the desktop and is implicated in routine creative, communicative, and just pl... ...es that allow for cheap copying also allow for swift and encyclopedic search engines—the best devices ever invented for detecting illicit copying. Wha... ... Amazon.com or Hotornot.com or the newspapers of the world online, or search engines, automatic page translation, plug-ins, or browsers. You cannot im... ...is.” The Office of Government Commerce said open source software is “a viable desktop alternative for the majority of government users” and “can genera... ...get outraged over copyright law.” 20 That cartoon now resides on my computer desktop. (It is under a Creative Commons license, ironically enough.) Who...

Read More