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The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Abstract
"Discusses how the Internet revolution has produced a powerful counterrevolution. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internets very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information--the ideas of our era--could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing, both legally and technically."
... Commoning in the case of the digital commons comes with a number of ICTs affordances, such as networked computing, lower costs, and decentralization coupled with transparency, accountability, merit-based economies, and inclusivity. The digital commons differ from Ostrom's ecological commons (1990) in that they expand in space and time: they are global and thus not confined in a specific location; the Internet works 24/7, and its basic code is open-sourced (end-to-end principle, see Lessig 2001Lessig , 2004. The digital commons can avoid the free-rider problem most prominent in physical space, since information is by essence non-rivalrous and, beyond this, anti-rivalrous. ...
... Liberal scholars approach the commons as an alternative mode of production peacefully coexisting alongside state and market operation. Setting aside any anarchistic and libertarian threads in their work, Elinor Ostrom (1990Ostrom ( , 2000, Lawrence Lessig (2001Lessig ( , 2004, and Yochai Benkler (2006Benkler ( , 2013 in general, do not challenge the state-capitalism nexus, suggesting that the commons develop most exclusively on the premises of civil society. ...
... Digital commons include elements of non-rivalry and non-exclusivity, characteristic of the creation of knowledge and the development of expertise in a community (Bauwens and Kostakis 2014;Bauwens and Jandrić 2021;Kostakis 2013;Meeker 2008;Latrive 2004;Lessig 2001;Moulier-Boutang 2001). As Peters and Besley (2019: 397) highlight, the postdigital 'aligns with the idea that knowledge is a common good and should be accessible to all, fostering inclusivity and equal opportunities for learning'. ...
... As Peters and Besley (2019: 397) highlight, the postdigital 'aligns with the idea that knowledge is a common good and should be accessible to all, fostering inclusivity and equal opportunities for learning'. This notion of digital commons is articulated specifically around forms of communalization of intellectual property (Lessig 2001;Pelissier 2018), but also in the mutualization of physical equipment. ...
This article investigates the postdigital organizational practices of a popular music creation complex in Quebec City, Canada. The case of Le Pantoum uncovers how practices of pooling resources, self-organization, and network development enable an independent music scene to survive and develop. Driven by creative needs rather than market demands, these organizational practices resist neoliberal entrepreneurial pressures while promoting collaboration and innovation. The study conceptualizes postdigital organizationality as a process for commoning, providing new insights into contemporary cultural production and creation. It opens discussions about postdigital aesthetics, the scenes as distributed communities, and decentralized power dynamics in managing common resources. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of how postdigital practices shape the organizational dynamics of a scene, challenging traditional notions of entrepreneurship and resource management.
... Scholarly interest in the commons saw an increase since the 1980s, especially following Ostrom's (1990) seminal work refuting Hardin's (1968) essay "The Tragedy of the Commons," demonstrating that properly governed commons can function as economic institutions that provide sustainable and effective alternatives to market-centered and state-oriented approaches to manage natural and cultural resources. In the mid-1990s, the rise of the Internet created new virtual communities and online communications in cyberspace, and the commons as a conceptual framework helped legal, economic, and information scholars (e.g., Boyle, 2008;Lessig, 2001) make sense of newly developed social dilemmas, as new technologies gradually captured and enclosed resources that were previously unowned and unprotected (Hess & Ostrom, 2007). Bollier and Helfrich (2012) elevated the idea of commons to something akin to a political ideology beyond the symbiotic duopoly of market and state, as "a paradigm that embodies its own logic and patterns of behavior, functioning as a different kind of operating system for society" (p. ...
This dissertation examines the intersection of cultural institutions and digital platforms, using Google Arts & Culture (GA&C) as a case study of platformization in the cultural sector. Theoretically, it situates GA&C within the intellectual and institutional lineage of the virtual museum, frames the platform as a networked memory institution with risks of digital enclosure and privatization, and unpacks its sociotechnical power through its various governance mechanisms. This study addresses three primary research questions: How did the platform evolve from the original Google Art Project into the current iteration of GA&C? How do the platform’s curatorial interventions and interface design shape content presentation? How do cultural institutions use the platform? A mixed-methods approach is adopted, including archival analysis of the platform’s website, mobile app, and outreach emails, content analysis of a highly curated section of the platform, visual analysis of the platform’s interface architecture, and semi-structured interviews with partner institutions. Key findings reveal a history of convergence among different cultural institutions on the platform but also a divergence from facilitating cultural institutions to engaging audiences through playful experience. The GA&C team plays an essential curatorial and editorial role in deciding project topics and managing featured content, while the platform’s interface prescribes a passive mode of user engagement that falls short of the promises of a truly participatory culture. While cultural institutions hoped for an aggregate portal with technological support from Google to expand their digital presence, the alignment between the platform and the partners, often a response to the partner’s internal digital strategy or external factors such as the global pandemic, ended up being contingent and experimental due to various issues on both sides. Finally, this dissertation also discusses the implications of GA&C for the participatory culture, the editorial role of digital platforms, and the datafication of arts and culture.
... In practice, the past few centuries have witnessed increasing privatization of knowledge through intellectual property rights and integration into the market economy despite serious questions about the theoretical justifications and empirical outcomes. Recognizing that knowledge is collectively created and improves through use, there is a strong argument that it should instead be managed as a global commons [18,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. In this article, we summarize these findings and draw on the theory of market failures to explain why IPRs are particularly ill suited to confronting the polycrisis. ...
Humanity faces numerous deeply interconnected systemic risks to sustainability—a global polycrisis. We need economic institutions that produce the knowledge required to address this polycrisis at the lowest cost, maximize the benefits that knowledge generates, and distribute those benefits fairly. Knowledge improves through use; its value is maximized when it is freely available. Intellectual property rights (IPRs), a form of monopoly, direct knowledge production towards market goods, raise the cost of doing research, and reduce the benefits by price-rationing access. Building on theories of the commons, the anticommons, and market failures, we propose the creation of a transnational green knowledge commons (TGKC) in which all knowledge that contributes to solving the polycrisis be made open access on the condition that any subsequent improvements also be open access. We argue that a TGKC is more sustainable, just, and efficient than restrictive IPRs and well suited to the motivations and governance institutions of public universities. We show how a single university could initiate the process and estimate that the cost would be more than offset by reduced IPR expenses. A TGKC would reduce the costs of generating and disseminating knowledge directed towards a sustainable future and help stimulate the transnational cooperation, reciprocity, and trust required for sustainable management of the global biophysical commons.
A Master of Education Thesis presented for the fulfillment of a Master’s Degree in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, from the York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Generative AI relies on simulating and learning from complex data distributions to automatically generate new, meaningful content from large datasets. Training generative AI models carries the risk of copyright infringement. How can we balance the development of generative AI technology with copyright protection during the training stage of these models? In contrast to existing legal scholarship, this article conducts a comparative study of industry-oriented U.S. copyright law and rights- oriented EU copyright law. It draws insights from the concepts of the tragedy of the commons and the tragedy of the anti-commons, proposing the creation of fair remuneration rights for Generative AI training under the UN’s international governance regime for AI. This article offers a typological analysis of potential operational models for fair remuneration rights in Generative AI training, drawing analogies to existing remuneration rights in international copyright treaties. The goal is to provide an open framework for further discussion within the international academic community.
This chapter provides an illustration of the novel food commons theory and approach. To introduce the topic, this chapter will first sketch the commons theory by identifying five main defining parameters: (1) the resource, (2) the subjects, (3) the governance, (4) the legal regime, and (5) the economic regime. After this, the food commons approach will be thoroughly defined. This part is divided into two main parts. First of all, the pars destruens of this doctrine will be taken into account, namely, its harsh critique of the contemporary postindustrial food system. Then the second part is devoted to describing the proactive proposals advanced by the food commons approach, which can be categorized under three main pillars: (1) a multidimensional and intrinsically political conception of food that rejects a monodimensional commodification of food and that nurtures instead various noncommodifiable dimensions (food as an essential life enabler, as a cultural and religious determinant, as a public good, as a human right, as a renewable natural resource, as a commodity, as a medicine, as a commons); (2) tricentric governance of food systems, where the food commons would balance and complement the other two traditional centers of power, represented by the public and the private sectors; and, eventually, (3) the reevaluation of food system actors, from mere passive consumers to food citizens constituting food democracy, i.e., as politically responsible individuals who collectively shape their food system according to more democratic, participative, and ecological mechanisms.
Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) generates texts, images, music, and videos. The technology is based on extensive training with copyrighted data. In the USA, AI developers rely on "fair use"; in Europe, the prevailing view is that the exception for "Text and Data Mining" (TDM) applies. The interdisciplinary study refutes this approach, as generative AI training fundamentally differs from TDM. It also explains why AI developers outside Europe are immediately subject to EU copyright law if their AI systems are accessible in the EU. Overall, it becomes clear that a more thorough, technology-oriented consideration and an adaptation of the law to reality are required.
The disparate treatment of the print and electronic media under federal regulation has been a curiosity to lawyers and economists for decades. Now, dynamic technical change in telecommunications markets is credited with bringing a new tension to the underlying premises of the law, calling into question the "physical scarcity" doctrine, which has long been one of the foundations for federal regulation of broadcasting. Yet, the omnibus Telecommunications Act of 1996 glaringly failed either to promote competition in the broadcasting sector or to disturb the legal distinction between broadcasting and the traditional press. Indeed, the physical scarcity doctrine is still the law of the land--despite the explicit policy goal in the 1996 Act to end disparate treatment of rival media. Professor Hazlett argues that this legal anomaly is all the more striking in light of the physical scarcity doctrine's gaping illogical holes, its shaky legal foundation, and the growing abundance of modern wireless communications. After demonstrating that the First Amendment arguments that focus on these three factors are analytically incomplete, Professor Hazlett goes on to provide a richer explanatory model, which includes examination of the public choice dynamics driving the historical development of broadcasting law. In this model, Professor Hazlett reveals that the physical scarcity doctrine can be criticized even on its own terms, and that the ancillary doctrines that have arisen in support of this doctrine are merely outgrowths of classic regulatory capture. Professor Hazlett concludes that the First Amendment implications are stark: the "chilling effect" on broadcast speech, which the U.S. Supreme Court first feared and then dismissed as empirically inconsequential, is a vital--and lasting--component in the regulation of electronic communications.
This Comment will trace the history of patent protection for methods of doing business over the past two decades, then it will inspect the problems that this protection has wrought: litigation, increased barriers to e-commerce entrepreneurs, and the threat of a less vibrant electronic marketplace. Because each traditional method of protecting intellectual property -- patent, copyright, and trade secret -- has strengths and limitations in protecting advancements in software technology, this Comment will examine the relative benefits of each method. Finally, this Comment will suggest a simple, easily applied test that will offer patent protection to true innovations while reserving methods of doing business for the open market, as they are the building blocks of commerce.
The purpose of this essay is to define and explore the meaning of "the exclusive Right" in the Intellectual Property Clause of the United States Constitution as related to the promotion of learning, the public domain, and authors. Without a clear understanding of this key term, one is likely to be unaware that lower federal courts are continually making rulings contrary to both the Copyright Clause and the Copyright Act. The classic example is the judicially created sweat-of-the-brow copyright, which in 1991 -- after seventy-five years of precedent -- the Supreme Court decreed to be unconstitutional. Other bad precedents, such as perpetual injunctions to prevent the infringement of future copyrights, remain uncorrected.
Part II of this article deals with the source of "the exclusive Right" that the framers empowered Congress to secure, which requires consideration of the history of the English copyright jurisprudence as well as the American understanding of that jurisprudence. Part III shows that copyright policies and principles are derived from the meaning of "the exclusive Right" as the right to publish and vend; and Part IV demonstrates that the 1976 Act codifies the principles discussed in light of "the exclusive Right." Part V is a brief commentary on understanding copyright, a goal that requires courts to cease reading the Copyright Act piecemeal and to read it whole in light of the Copyright Clause. Part VI is the conclusion.
Several recent commentators have criticized trends in the patent system by suggesting that the goals of the system can be better achieved through a variety of approaches that avoid or mitigate the monopoly-type impact of property rights. Suggested alternatives include the use of cash rewards, buy-outs, and liability rules, as distinct from property rules. This paper uses the important contributions made by these commentators to reveal shortcomings in any view of the patent system that focuses only on incentives to engage in inventive activity. The paper offers a new view of the patent system that embraces property rights and property rules as core elements of the patent system. According to this view, property treatment is essential for the subsequent commercialization activity that is necessary to get embodiments of nascent inventions into the hands of consumers and for efficiently identifying which inventions are worth the costs of government intervention in the first instance. The recently suggested alternatives fail to address these important goals of the patent system and would actually frustrate them. In addition, the current system already addresses many of the concerns raised by such commentary. The paper reveals how property rights and commercialization motivated the creation of our current patent system and explains many controversial trends in the system, including those that sparked the recent critical commentary, as well as those in other intellectual property regimes such as trademarks.