Frames from the Framers: How America's Revolutionaries Imagined Intellectual Property
The dominant metaphor in England for many years had compared creative work to the harvest of a landed estate. The estate metaphor was bounded by two others, however: commonwealth and monopoly. For some, the fruits of creativity should be “common stock,” as free and general as air or water, and therefore the estate in question should not be a private holding but more like the old agricultural
commons. For others, private estates were fine, but no one should monopolize their fruits.
Copyright and patent were understood to be monopolies, and unchecked monopolies were
understood as social evils.
authored by lewis hyde, published on 13 dec 2005
