This is a review of James Boyle's new book, Shamans, Software and Spleens:Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Boyle's book rangesacross the law of information, which he argues should be treated as aunified discipline. Boyle applies his analysis of "romantic authorship" tothe law of information, arguing that in copyright and elsewhere, the lawgives new works too much protection because it wrongly discounts thesources on which those works necessarily build. In this review, I suggestthat whatever its merits as legal argument, "romantic authorship" does notexplain very much about the features of copyright law, nor why copyrightprotection is expanding over time. I suggest an alternative explanation:that a particular strand of law and economics scholarship that endorsesstrong property rights is pushing for the "propertization" of all valuableinformation.
Romantic Authorship and the Rhetoric of Property