Law Commons^™

Commons / Commodity: Peer Production Caught In The Web Of The Commercial Market, Bingchun Meng, Fei Wu

Philip F Wu

The development of digital technology and computer networks has enabled many kinds of online collaboration. This article examines Zimuzu, a Chinese case of online peer production, which provides an opportunity to extend our understanding of how the tensions between the commodity and commons production models are being articulated in an online setting. Using empirical evidence collected from face-to-face interviews, online posts and online ethnographic observation, our analysis demonstrates that there is constant negotiation over which aspects of the two seemingly opposing models will be adopted by the community. We argue that it is important to conceptualize the peer production process …

Introduction To Creation Without Restraint: Promoting Liberty And Rivalry In Innovation, Christina Bohannan, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This document contains the table of contents, introduction, and a brief description of Christina Bohannan & Herbert Hovenkamp, Creation without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation (Oxford 2011).

Promoting rivalry in innovation requires a fusion of legal policies drawn from patent, copyright, and antitrust law, as well as economics and other disciplines. Creation Without Restraint looks first at the relationship between markets and innovation, noting that innovation occurs most in moderately competitive markets and that small actors are more likely to be truly creative innovators. Then we examine the problem of connected and complementary relationships, a dominant feature of …

Knowledge Curation, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article addresses conservation, preservation, and stewardship of knowledge, and laws and institutions in the cultural environment that support those things. Legal and policy questions concerning creativity and innovation usually focus on producing new knowledge and offering access to it. Equivalent attention rarely is paid to questions of old knowledge. To what extent should the law, and particularly intellectual property law, focus on the durability of information and knowledge? To what extent does the law do so already, and to what effect? This article begins to explore those questions. Along the way, the article takes up distinctions among different types …