by Kevin Lincoln
Professor James Boyle can fly.
Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and a co-founder of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which supports scholarship and research in the field of intellectual property Primarily, Boyle studies the ramifications of copyright law on the ideas, writings, films, music and other forms of creativity it governs.
The comic book “Bound by Law?”—which he keeps in tow —features Boyle’s cartoon doppelganger descending from the sky, riding an orange surfboard labeled “Google.” The cover is a busy scene: the Law School prof is accompanied by a faux-Superman judge brandishing a gavel, a jowly Michael Moore in trademark baseball cap, and the book’s spiky-haired protagonist wielding her camera like an assault rifle. Its title and epithet “By night she fought for FAIR USE!” point toward the battle between private interest and public good that the authors have rendered as the latest episode of David and Goliath.
“Bound by Law?”, co-written alongside artist and UC-Davis law professor Keith Aoki and Center Director Jennifer Jenkins, is one weapon in the campaign that Boyle plays a major role in: to broaden the public domain they believe is now being suffocated by America’s extensive copyright laws. “Bound” seems to be Boyle’s own effort at advancing a collaborative artistry, an informational and entertaining piece that provides a moralistic, animated translation of a complex legal issue. “Bound” and Boyle’s latest work, a book entitled simply “The Public Domain,” were published both for sale in print and for free online—a gesture made in the spirit of the books’ arguments.
In “The Public Domain,” Boyle addresses the problems he sees with today’s intellectual property laws.
“I am not saying copyright is bad. I actually think copyright’s a pretty good system. The basic principle [that] you only own the expression, [but] the facts and ideas can be used by anyone—that’s a pretty good line to draw,” Boyle said. “It’s just that we’ve expanded it in every dimension: how long it is, how much it covers, how fine it goes…. All I’m arguing for is a balance between what’s protected and the public domain, and I’m saying, we’ve forgotten the balance.”
What might initially seem to be an abstract issue reserved for ivory-tower legal scholars actually has taken a major role in the life of anyone who consumes or produces American media. Copyright’s influence is a plastic surgeon sculpting the face of hip-hop. It’s the black screen you see every time a Youtube video is taken down, the wasted potential of the Internet not filled as it could be by countless books, movies and films.
Read the Full Essay @ Towerview
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