By ROBERT DARNTON NYTimes
Published: August 20, 2010
The ideal of a Republic of Letters may sound archaic, but it is still alive. Under another name, the “cultural commons,” summons up associations with some current projects for sharing knowledge like Creative Commons, the Public Library of Science, Wikipedia and the Internet Archive.
COMMON AS AIR
Revolution, Art, and Ownership
By Lewis Hyde
Intellectual property has become such a hot topic that it needs to be doused with some history. Strange as it may sound, this is an argument developed convincingly in Lewis Hyde’s “Common as Air,” an eloquent and erudite plea for protecting our cultural patrimony from appropriation by commercial interests.
ReplyDeleteDefending the cultural commons might seem dubious, because the kind of knowledge that led to the Human Genome Project and the Internet was not dreamt of in the philosophies of the founders.
ReplyDeleteBut example are plenty from Hollywood, the pharmaceutical industry, agribusiness, and the swarm of lobbyists who transform public knowledge into private preserves by manipulating laws for the protection of intellectual property.
Disney should not be left out as a speakhead of much of the dirty work in this area. Reference Napster and a file ReMix a Manefesto for more background on their handiwork.