Review of James Boyle's The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (original) (raw)

COPYRIGHT, AND THE DECLINING AUTHORITY OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

Intellectual Property Office, 2011

The loss of respect for property rights lies behind the conflict over copyright and intellectual property. Not just new technologies, but developments in society proper call into question just how good a fit the rules of property are to mankind‘s daily grind. Still, without a clear alternative to the organisation of society along commercial lines, that conflict just drifts, without coming to a head.

Enclosures of the Mind: Intellectual Property From a Global Perspective

The main question asked is whether IP and IP-laws can still, or no longer, be justified from a historic and global perspective. While answering this question we don’t just look at the contemporary ethical issues, but take historic developments as our basis and startingpoint. This because historic analysis can unearth not just the history of IP-law itself, but also — and especially relevant for our question — how it functions in the world as the times change, changing the ways and degrees to which these laws apply and function, similar to how not just modifications to a text, but also the further evolution of the language it is written in, can change its readings.

One Hundred Years of Solicitude: Intellectual Property Law, 1900–2000

Routledge eBooks, 2017

The elaboration of intellectual property law is closely intertwined with new technologies. The Review Essay draws on selected episodes from the past 100 years to illustrate the three typical stages by which the legal system accomodates new technologies: (1) disequilibrium; (2) adaptation and adjustment; and (3) legislative consolidation. The final section of the Article introduces a cautionary contemporary note. As a byproduct of the increasing value of intellectual property, there has recently been a rapid increase in legislative activity, and concomitant lobbying activity. This changing political economy is greatly compressing the traditional threestep process, and may bypass it entirely in some circumstances. As a counterbalance to overzealous legislation, courts may be forced to look to the constitutional foundations of intellectual property as a source of limiting principles. 1. See, e.g., Benjamin Kaplan, AN UNHURRIED VIEW OF COPYRIGHT 1 (1966) ("As a veteran listener at many lectures by copyright specialists over the past decade, I know it is almost obiigatory for a speaker to begin by invoking the 'communications revolution' of our time, then to pronounce upon the inadequacies of the present copyright act ... "). I COPYRIGHT Copyright over the past century has often been the focal point of significant anxieties over the law's ability to adapt to new technologies. Movies, radio and television, video recording, software: each new technology has produced cries of alarm over our "outdated" copyright system. Yet through a combination of judicial adaptation and legislative updates, the copyright system has-so far, at least-been up to the job at every turn. This section discusses three of the most important developments in copyright law over the past century: the 1909 Act; the prologue to and promulgation of the 1976 Copyright Act (including the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright Works (CONTU)); and post-1976 doctrinal developments limiting the scope of software copyright under traditional concerns about functional works. In fits and starts, and with 2. Economists define rent as a supra-normal return, that is, a revenue higher than would be necessary to justify a given investment, taking into account a "normal" level of profit. See generally Alan W. Evans, On Monopoly Rent, 67 LAND ECON. 1 (1991). 3. Rent-seeking is the expenditure of resources in an effort to capture these supra-normal returns; lobbying for special legislative privileges is a classic example. See TOWARD A THEORY OF THE RENT-SEEKING SOCIETY (James M.

Living in the Shadow of the Intangible: The Nature of the Copy of a Copyrighted Work

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

Copyright laws throughout the world are copyright holder centric and present a very fragmented source to comprehend the rights of users, and in particular of consumers owning copies of copyrighted works. Although in recent years, a growing number of commentators have worked towards defining the place of users in copyright law, little attention has been devoted to the nature and justifications of copy ownership of copyrighted works. This paper applies property and copyright theory to define and justify the existence of copy ownership of copyrighted works. It seeks to carve out in clearer terms the place of copy ownership legally and normatively, to offer a counterbalance to a predominant copyright holder centric approach to copyright law. Part One of this paper lays the theoretical framework of property and copyright theory. Part Two applies the theoretical framework to define the nature of the copy of a copyrighted works, as well as its justifications. It explores the ramifications of copyright acting as a property limitation rule to copy ownership, and how copy ownership can also act as a property-limitation rule of copyright. A travers le monde, les lois sur le droit d'auteur sont centrées sur les détenteurs de ces droits et présentent donc une façon très fragmentée de concevoir les droits des utilisateurs et, plus particulièrement, des consommateurs qui possèdent des exemplaires d'oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur. Récemment, un nombre grandissant de commentateurs cherchent à mieux définir le statut des utilisateurs relativement au droit d'auteur, mais peu se sont penchés sur la nature et les justifications de la propriété d'exemplaires d'oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur. Dans cet article, l'auteure applique les théories de la propriété et du droit d'auteur pour définir et justifier le droit de propriété d'exemplaires d'oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur. Elle cherche à mieux comprendre la propriété d'exemplaires d'oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur, des points de vue juridique et normatif. Elle cherche aussi à présenter une approche différente de celle qui * B.C.L., LL.B. (McGill), LL.M. (K.U. Leuven) Ph.D (candidate) Osgoode Hall Law School, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. A shorter and earlier version of this paper was one of the winning entries of Canada's IP Writing Challenge award in October 2010. I thank Osgoode Hall Law School and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for making this research project possible. I also thank Giuseppina D'Agostino, Lisa Austin, Abraham Drassinower, Colin Grey and Hiram Melendez-Juarbe, as well as the participants of the ATLAS Agora doctoral seminar held in June 2010 at New York University School of Law, for insightful discussions or comments on earlier drafts of this paper. All errors remain mine.