James Boyle

In the following viewpoint James Boyle maintains that intellectual property rights, especially those laws that cover material published on the Internet, have become too extensive. He contends that these laws make the Internet overly centralized and regulated and do not encourage the creation of new works. Boyle also asserts that although the Internet does make it easier to copy intellectual works such as music, it also makes it easier, through the use of search engines, for owners of intellectual works to track down illegal copying, thus actually conferring to intellectual property owners a net gain. Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina, and the author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society. This viewpoint was originally given...