The Stanford Center for Internet and Society is hosting a conference, “Cultural Environmentalism at 10,” on March 10/11 to reflect upon the decade since the publication of Jamie Boyle’s fantastic book, Shamans, Software, and Spleens. While the topic of Jamie’s book (IP policy) is something IP scholars had been talking about for ever, Jamie’s book was one of the best to introduce these issues to a community beyond law scholars. (I first heard about the book at lunch a decade ago when Harvard’s provost told me it was “one of the most important law books I had ever read.”). The book, and the articles that followed it, gave birth to what we should call the “cultural environmentalism” movement — the movement to think about IP policy as environmentalists think about pollution policy.
We designed this conference a bit differently from others. I asked a bunch of IP professors to give me their list of the top “young” IP scholars. I tabulated the votes, and asked the top four to write papers. They agreed. Their papers will be commented upon by leading IP scholars. Here’s the list of presenters and commentators.
Here’s the Center’s announcement. If you can make it, be sure to reserve. There are already a large number who have RSVPd, so act soon.
Cultural Environmentalism at 10
March 11-12, 2006
Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/conferences/cultural/
Ten years ago, Duke Law Professor Jamie Boyle suggested that the history of the environmental movement offered powerful theoretical and practical lessons to those who sought to recognize the importance of the public domain, and to expose the harms caused by a relentlessly maximalist program of intellectual property expansion.
On March 11-12, 2006, Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society will host a symposium to explore the development and expansion of the metaphor of “cultural environmentalism” over the course of ten busy years for intellectual property law. We’ve invited four scholars to present original papers on the topic, and a dozen intellectual property experts to comment and expand on their works.
Molly Van Houweling explores voluntary manipulation of intellectual property rights as a tool for cultural environmentalism. Susan Crawford extends Boyle’s analysis to the age of networks. Rebecca Tushnet, looks at the ways in which the law’s impulse to generalize complicates the project of cultural environmentalism, and Madhavi Sunder looks at how the metaphor affects traditional knowledge. Professor Boyle will also offer some remarks, as will Stanford Law School’s Professor Lawrence Lessig.
The event is free, but registration is required. We look forward to seeing you.
