Cultural Agoraphobia: What We Can Learn from our Biases
The future of internet policy and intellectual property rights

In his new book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, James Boyle argues that we have a bias that makes us unduly sceptical of open networks, systems and methods of production. The success of non proprietary systems - ranging from open source software to Wikipedia and the open Internet itself - fills us with surprise. He calls this bias "cultural agoraphobia".

This talk will explain why that bias might mean that we would not invent the World Wide Web again, if given a chance today, and will explore the implications of cultural agoraphobia for the future of our internet policy and for the intellectual property rights that shape our culture and our science.

Conference with James Boyle (Duke Law School), professor of the LL.M. Law in a European and Global Context.

Chairman: Miguel Poiares Maduro, co-director of the LL.M. Law in a European and Global Context and professor at European University Institute, Florence

The conference was  held on May 17, 18:00 - 19:30, at Universidade Católica, in Lisbon.

LL.M. Law in a European and Global Context Partners