Cultural Environmentalism at 10: Real Property, Intellectual Property, and the Constructed Commons

Summary: Environmentalists have a complicated relationship with property rights. Those who worry about the physical environment often decry strong property rights that threaten to derail environmental regulation. But environmentalists have also harnessed property rights to preserve important habitats and open spaces, using voluntary, property-based mechanisms like conservation easements to block land development. Similarly, those concerned with cultivating a cultural environment in which creative works contribute to new generations of creativity often criticize strong intellectual property rights that threaten to impoverish the public domain. But cultural environmentalists have also harnessed intellectual property rights in an attempt to create and preserve a cultural commons, using voluntary, intellectual property-based mechanisms like Free Software and Creative Commons licenses. This paper will explore the advantages and disadvantages of using voluntary manipulation of intellectual property rights as a tool for cultural environmentalism-drawing on the experience of the conservation movement, and on scholarship and case law debating the merits of encumbering assets with idiosyncratic property rights. About the Speaker: Molly Shaffer Van Houweling joined the Boalt faculty in fall 2005 from the University of Michigan Law School, where she had been an assistant professor since 2002. Van Houweling's teaching and research interests include intellectual property, law and technology, property, and constitutional law. She was a visiting professor at Boalt in 2004-05.