Cultivating Open Information Platforms: A Land Trust Model

James Boyle has led a recent call for intellectual property “environmentalism”—a movement to fend off perceived threats to the public interest posed by expansions in the scope and term of intellectual property protection.1 Inspired in part by Boyle’s message, a number of organizations have sprung up that aspire to expand and cultivate the body of intellectual works that are not subject to proprietary control.2 The Internet’s original development as a non-proprietary information platform is another source of inspiration for this incipient movement.3 The Internet is built on a suite of protocols—