...e The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind Yale University Press New Haven & London ___-1 ___0 ___ 1 37278_u00.qxd 8/28/08 11:04 AM Pag... ...a brilliant composer, not only educated me in composition and the history of musical borrowing but co-taught a class on musical borrowing that dramati... ...” 2 For several years now I have been a columnist for the Financial Times’s “New Economy Policy Forum.” Portions of Chapter 5 and Chapter 9 had their ... ...s the emergence of an area of concern, the coming together of very different groups around a shared problem—an imbalance in the rules that define prop-... ...s? Even the ones they claim to have been dictated by gods or aliens? Even if American copyright law requires “an author,” presumably a human one? 9 Ca... ...r the films of the Second World War, or footage on the daily lives of African-Americans during segregation, or the music of the Great Depression, or th... ... create out of thin air. Perhaps he or she is deeply embedded in a literary, musical, cultural, or scientific tra- dition that would not flourish if tre... ...n them might help to explain both the problems and the stakes in the current wave of expansion. Unlike the earthy commons, the commons of the mind is ... ...you can quickly reach the same num- ber of ears that the payola-soaked radio waves allow the record companies to reach. One need not cheer Grokster. M...

... copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today's policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its...