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Intellectual Property And Americana, Or Why Ip Gets The Blues, Michael J. Madison
Intellectual Property And Americana, Or Why Ip Gets The Blues, Michael J. Madison
Articles
This essay, prepared as part of a Symposium on intellectual property law and business models, suggests the re-examination of the role of intellectual property law in the persistence of cultural forms of all sorts, including (but not limited to) business models. Some argue that the absence of intellectual property law inhibits the emergence of durable or persistent cultural forms; copyright and patent regimes are justified precisely because they supply foundations for durability. The essay tests that proposition via brief reviews of three persistent but very different cultural models, each of which represents a distinct form of American culture: The Rocky …
Law As Design: Objects, Concepts, And Digital Things, Michael J. Madison
Law As Design: Objects, Concepts, And Digital Things, Michael J. Madison
Articles
This Article initiates an account of things in the law, including both conceptual things and material things. Human relationships matter to the design of law. Yet things matter too. To an increasing extent, and particularly via the advent of digital technology, those relationships are not only considered ex post by the law but are designed into things, ex ante, by their producers. This development has a number of important dimensions. Some are familiar, such as the reification of conceptual things as material things, so that computer software is treated as a good. Others are new, such as the characterization of …
Reconstructing The Software License, Michael J. Madison
Reconstructing The Software License, Michael J. Madison
Articles
This article analyzes the legitimacy of the software license as a institution of governance for computer programs. The question of the open source license is used as a starting point. Having conducted a broader inquiry into the several possible bases for the legitimacy of software licensing in general, the article argues that none of the grounds on which software licensing in general rests are sound. With respect to open source software in particular, the article concludes that achieving a legitimate institutional form for the goals that open source proponents have set for themselves may require looking beyond licensing as such.