James Boyle (legal scholar)
Scottish legal academic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Boyle (born 1959[1]) is a Scottish intellectual property scholar. He is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina.[2] He is most prominently known for advocating looser copyright policies in the United States and worldwide.
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James Boyle | |
|---|---|
Boyle in 2008 | |
| Born | 1959 (age 65) Scotland |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Education | |
| Occupations | Legal academic and author |
| Employer | Duke University School of Law |
| Known for | Creative Commons |
| Notable work |
|
| Title | William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law |
| Awards | Duke Bar Association Distinguished Teaching Award |
| Website | |
Teaching and activism
Boyle graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1980 and subsequently studied at Harvard Law School.[1] He joined Duke University School of Law in July 2000.[3] He had previously taught at American University, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
In 2002, he was one of the founding board members of Creative Commons,[4] and held the position of Chairman of the Board in 2009, after which he stepped down.[5][3] He also co-founded Science Commons, which aims to expand the Creative Commons mission into the realm of scientific and technical data, and ccLearn, a division of Creative Commons aimed at facilitating access to open education resources.[6]
In 2006, he earned the Duke Bar Association Distinguished Teaching Award.[3]
The courses he teaches include "Intellectual Property", "The Constitution in Cyberspace", "Law and Literature", "Jurisprudence", and "Torts".[3]
Written works
He is the author of The Line: AI & The Future of Personhood,[7] Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society[8] as well as a novel published under a Creative Commons license, The Shakespeare Chronicles.[9][10]
In his work on intellectual property, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (2008), Boyle argues that the current system of copyright protections fails to fulfill the original intent of copyright: rewarding and encouraging creativity.[11] It was also published under a non-commercial CC BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license.[12]
Boyle also contributes a column to the Financial Times New Technology Policy Forum.
In 2011, Boyle was one of five experts consulted for the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, a comprehensive analysis of the United Kingdom's intellectual property system that made suggestions for data-driven reform of the system.[13]
Selected publications
- Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society, Harvard University Press 1997, ISBN 978-0-674-80522-4
- The Public Domain (ed), Winter/Spring 2003 edition of Law and Contemporary Problems (vol 66, ##1–2), Duke University School of Law
- Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain , Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain 2006, ISBN 978-0-9741553-1-9
- Cultural Environmentalism @ 10 (ed, with Lawrence Lessig), Spring 2007 edition of Law and Contemporary Problems (vol 70, #2), Duke University School of Law
- Cultural Environmentalism and Beyond
- The Shakespeare Chronicles: A Novel, Lulu Press 2006, ISBN 978-1-4303-0768-6
- Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, Yale University Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-13740-8
- Theft: A History of Music, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2017, ISBN 978-1535543675
- The Line: AI & The Future of Personhood, MIT Press 2024, ISBN 978-0262049160
