Now more than ever, information is power, and questions about who owns it, who controls it, and who gets to use it carry powerful implications. These are the questions Boyle explores in matters as diverse as autodialers and direct advertising, electronic bulletin boards and consumer databases, ethno-botany and indigenous pharmaceuticals, the right of publicity (why Johnny Carson owns the phrase "Here's Johnny!"), and the right to privacy (does J. D. Salinger "own" the letters he's sent?). Boyle finds that our ideas about intellectual property rights rest on the notion of the Romantic author--a notion that Boyle maintains is not only outmoded but actually counterproductive, restricting debate, slowing innovation, and widening the gap between rich and poor nations. What emerges from this lively discussion is a compelling argument for relaxing the initial protection of authors' works and expanding the concept of the fair use of information. For those with an interest in the legal, ethical, and economic ramifications of the dissemination of information--in short, for every member of the information society, willing or unwilling--this book makes a case that cannot be ignored.

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In 1990 the Supreme Court of California ruled that DNA extracted from a spleen removed from your body could be patented--one of many court precedents to define the emerging laws of cyberspace. Boyle explores such seemingly weird decisions as well as legal issues surrounding autodialers, direct advertising, consumer databases, ethnobotany, the right of publicity, and the right to privacy. Boyle argues that contemporary ideas about intellectual property are based on a Romantic notion of selfhood that is outmoded and counterproductive in our information-based society, a society in which--as someone else probably said before the phrase was popularized by Stewart Brand--"information wants to be 'free.'"