Best Practices, from the American University Center for Social Media

Copyright and Fair Use, from the Stanford University Libraries

Copyrights and Wrongs, from the American Association of University Professors

The Copyright Crash Course, from the University of Texas at Austin

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States, from Cornell University

A Map of Use Issues, from the University of Minnesota

Public Domain Slider, Section 108 Spinner, and Fair Use Evaluator, from the American Library Association

Tales From the Public Domain: Bound By Law? A comic book from public domain scholars at the Duke University Law School

The access to knowledge (A2K) movement first came together in 2004 to respond to a crisis, namely the increasing imbalance between privatized knowledge (that which is controlled by the intellectual property rights holder) and the knowledge commons (that which is “owned” by the public). This crisis had been precipitated by the advancement by some Northern governments of an economic agenda which has consistently pushed for stronger and broader intellectual property (IP) protection.

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

Germany, on the other hand, didn’t bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany’s biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany’s continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire.

The downsides are two. The first is that the reward to success bears no relation to the cost of invention. In what respect is it necessary, reasonable, or fair to grant a 31-year monopoly and make a man fabulously wealthy because he spent a few years working on a project that benefited his fellow man? Certainly this kind of inducement was not needed for Trevithick, whose contribution to steam technology raised the duty 110 percent as against Watt’s contribution, which raised the duty only 80 percent.

The second downside of the patent system is the devastating effect it has on incremental innovation. From 1786 to 1800 there was no increase in the duty of steam engines at all, as Boulton and Watt successfully sought to prevent competition by suppressing innovation.

"At base, the unknowability of the new financial commodities is a consequence of the at base oxymoronic character of Intellectual Property. IP is an oxymoron in that, in order for the intellectual merit of, say, an idea, to be acknowledged and then valued on some quantitative scale of relative merit, it must first be communicated. However valuable I might consider my own ideas, there can be no compelling reason for another to share my evaluation without her first understanding them. For her to do this, I can’t keep them private; I have to say what they are. I can’t even get away with just saying what they are “like.” However, once communicated, it is difficult to control the understander’s use of the idea.