Digital Property and the Digital Commons

Digital Property and the Digital Commons
Brad Sherman

ISBN 9789041198471
Kluwer Law International

The early history of the Internet was a period characterized by utopian, libertarian ideals of a boundless terrain, a space in which information, ideas and speech could move freely, quickly and without constraint. It took comparatively little time, however, for these ideas to be challenged by attempts to regulate and control the use that is made of the web. This, in turn, has prompted fears that the expansion of copyright, especially when combined with new data base protection and the possibility for users to contract out of their defences will undermine the notion of the public domain.