The public domain

The public domain, de James Boyle - para comprar ou para download

For a set of reasons that I will explain later, “the
opposite of property” is a concept that is much more important when we
come to the world of ideas, information, expression, and invention. We
want a lot of material to be in the public domain, material that can be
spread without property rights. “The general rule of law is, that the
noblest of human productions—knowledge, truths ascertained,
conceptions, and ideas—become, after voluntary communication to others,
free as the air to common use.”12
Our art, our culture, our science depend on this public domain every
bit as much as they depend on intellectual property. The third goal of
this book is to explore property’s outside, property’s various
antonyms, and to show how we are undervaluing the public domain and the
information commons at the very moment in history when we need them
most. Academic articles and clever legal briefs cannot solve this
problem alone.

Instead, I argue that precisely because we are in
the information age, we need a movement—akin to the environmental
movement—to preserve the public domain. The explosion of industrial
technologies that threatened the environment also taught us to
recognize its value. The explosion of information technologies has
precipitated an intellectual land grab; it must also teach us about
both the existence and the value of the public domain. This
enlightenment does not happen by itself. The environmentalists helped
us to see the world differently, to see that there was such a thing as
“the environment” rather than just my pond, your forest, his canal. We
need to do the same thing in the information environment.

We have to “invent” the public domain before we can save it. . . .