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The Public Domain : Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

By: James Boyle

...’ Tale: An Allegory, 83 6 I Got a Mashup, 122 7 The Enclosure of Science and Technology: T wo Case Studies, 160 8 A Creative Commons, 179 9 An Eviden... ...onmental movement—to preserve the public domain. The explosion of industrial technologies that threatened the environ- ment also taught us to recogniz... ...ty and the public domain is important in every area of culture, science, and technology. As a result, it ranges widely in subject matter. Yet readers ... ...ny readers with little additional effort or cost. Indeed, de- pending on the technologies of reproduction, it may be very hard to exclude people from ... ...us the “problem” of cheap copying in fact becomes a virtue. Second, the same technologies that make copying cheaper may also lower the costs of advert... ...Property? 5 ___-1 ___0 ___ 1 37278_u01.qxd 8/28/08 11:04 AM Page 5 these technologies will be patentable—only those that are novel and “nonob- vio... ...ve done.) In return for the legal monopoly, patent holders must describe the technol- ogy well enough to allow anyone to replicate it once the patent ... ...rn to secrecy instead, hiding the details of her innovation behind black box technologies and restrictive contracts, so that society never gets the kn... ...tempts to reward friends of the government and restrict or control dangerous technologies. T rade- mark law has shuttled uneasily between being a free...

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