Commercial and Cultural Agrophobia

We have a cultural and commercial bias to fear openness and overvalue secrecy. So says Professor James Boyle, co-founder of Creative Commons and author of The Public Domain, who spoke at Nesta on Friday which I was sadly unable to attend. The webcast is available here if you want to take a look.

As a former professional musician and book publisher, I have seen at first hand the value of IP and the erosion of otherwise sound businesses due in large part because of ineffective IP management. Whilst our IP regimes are always lagging behind practice, I think we are at a point where this lag is so vast, that substantive change is required, else it risks becoming irrelevant which is in nobodies long term interest. This event seems to have been very interesting and thought provoking and hopefully will spark some debate, and I hope larger scale change in our IP regimes.

Comments

  1. hi
    I remember a similar post at JP(BT)’s Blog.. while we generally criticize the IP and DRM regimes, is it possible to direct people to alternatives, Say Creative Commons for instance.. other than that, what are the other possibilities…

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