The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
James Boyle has made his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind available for free download, under a Creative Commons license. The book may currently be either downloaded as a PDF or read on-line in HTML; however, given that it has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License, undoubtedly e-book versions will be popping up soon on Feedbooks and other such sites before long.
Although I have not yet read past the Preface, the book looks like a very interesting treatise on the abuses of intellectual property laws in present society. The preface starts with an anecdote of one of Boyle’s students being upset when faced with a patent on a method of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Boyle enumerates some of the many abuses of intellectual property that have been seen in recent years, then writes:
With all of this going on, this enclosure movement of the mind, this locking up of symbols and themes and facts and genes and ideas (and eventually people), why get excited about the patenting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? “I just thought that there were limits,” he said; “some things should be sacred.”
The preface goes on to lay out Boyle’s goals for the book, which are to explain and propose solutions to today’s problems with intellectual property in a style that ordinary people can read and understand. Judging from the preface, he seems to do fairly well so far. I will look forward to reading the whole thing when it has been converted to a format I can read portably, and when I have the time.
(Found on Slashdot.)
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