CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy
By, Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer
Publisher: The MIT Press
Class No.: 302.3 GHO
Accession No.:013314
Year: 2005
Pages: 345 p.

Of the week: 24th April to 29th April., 2006

CODE is a mature and sophisticated exploration of the most important issues related to creativity in the digital age. The broad mix of scholars, offering extraordinarily insightful perspectives, makes this collection essential for understanding this critically important set of questions. CODE looks at the collaborative model of creativity -- with examples ranging from collective ownership in indigenous societies to free software, academic science, and the human genome project -- and finds it an alternative to proprietary frameworks for creativity based on strong intellectual property rights.

Discussing the philosophically resonant issues of ownership, property, and the commons, they ask if the increasing application of the language of property rights to knowledge and creativity constitutes a second enclosure movement -- or if the worldwide acclaim for free software signifies a renaissance of the commons. Two concluding chapters offer concrete possibilities for both alternatives, with one proposing the establishment of "positive intellectual rights" to information and another issuing a warning against the threats to networked knowledge posed by globalization.From anthropology the book winds its way through economics, public policy, and the life sciences, ranging from flights of theory to examples grounded in local cultures.