Shamans, Software and Spleens : Law and the Construction of the Information Society by Boyle, James (1997) Paperback

by James Boyle

Will be dispatched from UK. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back .

Genres: Law, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the former Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons. His books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind; Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society; Cultural Environmentalism (with Lawrence Lessig); and Bound By Law: Tales from the Public Domain and Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society - Cases & Materials: An Open Casebook (with Jennifer Jenkins).

Reviews

[Kathleen]

You can patent DNA from your spleen?! What?!

[Catherine]

Introduced to this author by a friend last night. Seems he's sort of like a Naomi Klein pop-writer of sorts that has grown out of traditions like Midnight Notes (just learned about this group last night too) and Autonomedia. Things like "The Commons" (yeah, think Boston Commons or Creative Commons and it's along those lines of self-organizing, self-sustaining). Anyhoo, looks like he might be worth a read.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as straight-forward as Boyle's more recent book, The Public Domain, this provides an interesting introduction (from a 1990s point of view) to what it mean to be part of an information society and what cultural ideologies surround the concept of information. (And how all that affects copyright policy.)

[Sandeep · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting ideas obscured by the terrible prose.

[Ramona · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conceptually interesting, but out of date. There are better books on the topic.