Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth

by David Bollier

Overview

'They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.' - Traditional nursery rhyme Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed to own every federal court decision, including Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. A Texas c

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781136760341
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/15/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

David Bollier has worked for twenty years as a journalist, activist, and public policy analyst. He is Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Director of the Information Commons Project at the New America Foundation. He is also co-founder of Public Knowledge, a public-interest advocacy organization dedicated to defending the commons of the Internet, science and culture.

Table of Contents

1. Reclaiming the Narrative of the Commons 2. The Stubborn Vitality of the Gift Economy 3. When Markets Enclose the Commons 4. Enclosing the Commons of Nature 5. The Colonization of Frontier Commons 6. The Abuse of the Public's Natural Resources 7. Can the Internet Commons Be Saved? 8. The Privatization of Public Knowledge 9. Enclosing the Academic Commons 10. The Commercialization of Culture and Public Spaces 11. The Giveaway of Federal Drug Research and Information Resources 12. The Commons: Another Kind of Property 13. Strategies for Protecting the Commons

Editorial Reviews

A calm reasonable primer on a topic of enormous importance. Buy a copy, and when you've read it, donate it to that wonderful commons called your local library.

Bill McKibben

A tour de force narrative that draws the reader into high alert...

Ralph Nader

This beautifully written, carefully argued book shows how little we learned from the past. Free and open resources have always been central to creativity and growth; Bollier shows how in a range of important contexts, free and open resources are being enclosed, to the benefit of the corporate class, and burden of Americans generally.

Lawrence Lessig

"Bollier gives convincing examples of how natural resources (including water), public information, federal drug research, and public space are all being snapped up for private gain.Mr. Bollier describes valiant efforts to reclaim those things, places, and information held in common-to be shared forever by the private gain of no one.
-Brian Smith, Earth Justice IN BRIEF."

From the Publisher