James Boyle's New Book Under CC License

An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle has released his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press) under a Creative Commons License. It can be downloaded free or read online. There are chapters on Thomas Jefferson's views of IP, musical borrowing and the birth of soul, free software, and synthetic biology. Lessig is impressed. Doctorow says he is a law prof who writes like a comedian (is this a good thing?), and credits Boyle's first book for getting him involved in online rights."

Comments

Re:Comedy of law

[Max Littlemore]

I don't have the book on hand, but Bill Bryson put it well towards the start of "A Short History of Nearly Everything" where he blames the dry and boring nature of science textbooks and the authors need to put questions at the end of every chapter for squashing his interest in science. He then goes on to praise scientific authors who can make their work informative and entertaining.

I agree wholeheartedly. Make an otherwise dry subject funny and interesting and it becomes more memorable and therefore easier to learn.

To demonstrate my point, I have deliberately made this post dry and dull. You will notice that within a week you will have forgotten it entirely.

Re:Comedy of law

[argiedot]

Resnick, Halliday and Walker (Fundamentals of Physics) did a great job with this. I loved how each chapter would start with a story and a question formed from that. For example, Electromagnetics, I think, started with telling how Jimi Hendrix fiddled with his guitar pickups to change the kind of sound he got.

Pretty much one of the best Physics textbooks I had when in high school.

Re:Comedy of law

[digitig]

Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics are good in that regard, too. For example, he starts his lecture on planetary motion by describing the medieval myth that planets were pushed around by invisible angels. He finishes by pointing out that because we don't really understand what gravity is, all we've really done is turn the invisible angel through 90 degrees and say how hard it pushes.