The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, is sponsoring an online discussion group focusing on the history of what it calls intellectual property in the U.S.

Anyone at least age 13 can participate.

When I registered this was part of the page: ---

Here is Lewis Hyde's invitation to the reading group:

My own interest in this history began with the surprising lack of debate some years ago when copyright term extension was pending. There seemed to be almost no public sense of why it might matter to preserve a lively public domain. One was led to wonder if there weren't historical roots to the public domain's lack of presence in our political and economic discourse. If that is the case, might not an understanding of this history be a useful tool for those of us trying to shape current policy?

For a reading group I propose an initial meeting in February where we talk about the scope of our interests, and make a list of what we might read. I suggest one short first reading (Carla Hesse's "The Rise of Intellectual Property, 700 B.C.--A.D. 2000" (Daedalus, Spring 2002)). As for other readings, we will decide these together but at the moment my own list would include works such as Mark Rose's "Authors and Owners," Siva Vaidhyanathan's "Copyrights and Copywrongs," and Edward Walterscheid's recent book on "The Nature of the Intellectual Property Clause." Navigation Project Home Syllabus Readings / Resources Rotisserie Discussions Message Boards

You can click on a link here to register:

GrepLaw.org, History of Intellectual Property .

Here is where I found it:

The Invent Blog .

I wonder if a certain forthcoming book might be discussed at this site?

The discussion group appears to have been active in 2004, but seems to be dormant now. Oh well.