James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Professor Boyle was one of the original Board Members of Creative Commons, which works to facilitate the free availability of art, scholarship, and cultural materials by developing innovative, machine-readable licenses that individuals and institutions can attach to their work. He served as a board member from 2002 until 2009, the last year as Chairman of the Board. He was also a co-founder of Science Commons, which aimed to expand the Creative Commons mission into the realm of scientific and technical data, and has served as a member of the board of the Public Library of Science. In 2003 Professor Boyle won the World Technology Network Award for Law for his work on the public domain and the “second enclosure movement” that threatens it. In 2010 he was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. He was one of five advisers to the UK government’s 2011 Hargreaves Review of the Intellectual Property and Growth. (His favorite quote from that document is “Could it be true that laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators’ rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth? The short answer is: yes.”) Professor Boyle is the author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society, and The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. He is the editor of Critical Legal Studies, Collected Papers on the Public Domain and Cultural Environmentalism @ 10 (with Larry Lessig.) He has also written a distressing number of articles on intellectual property, internet regulation and legal theory both for scholarly journals and the popular press. His other books include two “scholarly comic books” co-written with Jennifer Jenkins — Bound By Law, about fair use and Theft: A History of Music, a 2000 year long story about music and musical borrowing. Both can be freely downloaded under Creative Commons licenses. Before newspapers disappeared behind paywalls, he wrote a regular column in the Financial Times’ New Economy Policy Forum. His 280 character observations on various issues can be found on Twitter @thepublicdomain .
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From the Blog
Everything You Know About §230 Is Wrong (But Why?)
Free, Open, Intellectual Property Textbook
‘Dumping: On Law Reviews’. The Green Bag
Mark of the Devil: The University as Brand Bully
Tragedy/Comedy of the Commons @ 50
Theft: A History of Music — Free Comic
(When) Is Copyright Reform Possible?
Apple Updates — A Comic
Open Coursebook in Intellectual Property
So you’ve invented fantasy football, now what?
Free/Low Cost Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement
Persnickety Snit
Macaulay on Copyright
Mark Twain on the Need for Perpetual Copyright
Victor Hugo: Guardian of the Public Domain
“We Need To Start Seeing Other Futures..”
Discussion: “The Foolish War Against Song-Lyric Websites”
The Top Ten List of a Conference Planner
(EM)I Has A Dream
The Prosecution of Aaron: A Response to Orin Kerr
The Hargreaves Review
Keith Aoki — A Remembrance Book
Now THAT is how you teach a class
RIP, Keith Aoki
The Future of the Constitution?
Recent Posts
- Everything You Know About §230 Is Wrong (But Why?)
- Free, Open, Intellectual Property Textbook
- ‘Dumping: On Law Reviews’. The Green Bag
- Mark of the Devil: The University as Brand Bully
- Tragedy/Comedy of the Commons @ 50
- Theft: A History of Music — Free Comic
- (When) Is Copyright Reform Possible?
- Apple Updates — A Comic
- Open Coursebook in Intellectual Property
- So you’ve invented fantasy football, now what?
- Free/Low Cost Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement
- Persnickety Snit
- Macaulay on Copyright
- Mark Twain on the Need for Perpetual Copyright
- Victor Hugo: Guardian of the Public Domain
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