BOOK
REVIEW
CURRENT TITLES,
IDEAS, SOURCES
By Michele Tepper
The Public Domain:
Enclosing the Commons
of the Mind
James Boyle
Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300137408
$28.50
James Boyle is a co-founder of the
Creative Commons, a legal scholar,
and a longtime activist against the
expansion of intellectual property
rights. His 1997 Shamans, Software,
and Spleens was a foundational text
in the movement. While Shamans was
written primarily for scholars, his
new book takes his case to a broader
audience. The Public Domain makes
a nuanced, readable case for why
the general reader should care about
something as apparently arcane as the
length of a copyright.
Boyle’s primary argument is that
we have lost the balance between
intellectual property ownership
rights, which provide incentives to
publish new works, and the rights of
the audience to the large and rich public domain of their culture. Through
multiple extensions to the length of
a copyright term, we have locked up
the cultural resources produced in the
20th century—the forgotten works, as
well as the classics—for another hundred years without thinking through
the consequences. Boyle wants us to
rebalance the scales, not to deny the
rights of intellectual property holders but to also consider the public
domain’s rights as well.
The high point of the book is
Boyle’s analysis of Ray Charles’s “I
Got A Woman,” tracing it backward
to the gospel tracks Charles took as
his inspiration and forward to Kanye
West’s “Gold Digger,” as well as the
Notorious KO’s anti-Bush rap song
inspired by West. Boyle shows how lit-
tle of 20th century culture could have
been created with today’s copyright
laws, and how today’s restrictions
limit access, and audience, for new
visions. By never losing sight of the
fact that artists and inventors need to
make a living, Boyle makes his case all
the stronger. This book is a must-read
for anyone who cares about innova-
tion, whether as consumer or creator.
Predictably Irrational:
The Hidden Forces That Shape
Our Decisions (Revised Edition)
Dan Ariely
HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 978-0-06-135323-9
$25.95
