commons on a whole minute

I have uploaded my thesis for my Master of Communication degree, A Community-Based Model for the Production of Ideas. I argue that treating ideas as the products of communities, rather than the exclusive property of individuals, resolves a number of significant flaws with copyright. More importantly, community-based production promotes communities and aids the self-development of individuals. Since community and self-development are desirable in and of themselves, they provide both a motivation for community development and a moral argument in favor of it.

The Canadian government has indicated that it intends to push ahead and change copyright law – without consulting with ordinary Canadians who will be affected in their everyday lives. But the issues remain unclear to many citizens and journalists. I have put together the faircopy site to help explain what this is about, how it affects all Canadians, and what we can do about it. This is intended to put together a clear overview, augmenting existing efforts like the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

Last Friday I attended “The Age of Immersion”, a talk about cinema by two famous names in Hollywood – Walter Murch and Matthew Robbins, moderated by Professor Andrew Feenberg. And I thought, these moviemakers are on one side of an issue, and I am on another. The nature of authorship and authority is changing. Their belief in their authority as creators lies so deep in their souls that they do not even realize it is challenged. …

I have uploaded the text of a speech I gave about the relationship between commons and community. I presented this a few days ago on a panel at the Union for Democratic Communications conference “Enclosure, Emancipatory Communication and the Global City”, held in Vancouver, B.C.

There is a contradiction in how we talk about the ownership of ideas. On the one hand, we speak of property rights over owned ideas (as with copyright and patents); on the other, we talk about shared works – such as free and open source software – having “owners” – by which we mean people who take responsibility for them. Thus, ownership has two distinct meanings: one rooted in rights, the other in responsibility. For physical property, the two are frequently allied; but in the case of creativity and intellectual works, property rights are often the enemy of responsibility. …

When ideas are property, the ideas we have are different than when they are not. If we look for peer production to produce the same familiar novels, music, and films that arise from proprietary production, we are bound to be disappointed. Worse, we will be blind to the different qualities of works produced in the commons, and to the engagement, the community, and the self-development that take place there. …

In Software and Community in the 21st Century, Eben Moglen suggests that “in the twenty-first century the most important activities that produce occur not in factories, and not by individual initiative, but in communities held together by software.” This is a big claim that captures the importance of software and commons production in the world we live in. …

Eben Moglen’s Software and Community in the 21st Century speech is brilliant. I have been thinking about the relationship between commons production and community for some time now. I believe a commons of ideas underpins democracy and is important for community and identity. It is inspiring to see someone take those themes and extend them to social justice in general. It is thrilling to see the developer community at large (me included) waking up to the political implications of what they care about and what they do. . . .

Eben Moglen, lawyer with the Free Software Foundation, gave a keynote address at the October 2006 Plone conference in Seattle. The video can be seen at YouTube or downloaded from archive.org. He explains the economic reality and moral justification for free software, and its role in the struggle for human freedom historically and in society at large. His presentation is inspiring; I highly recommend watching it. I have also transcribed the speech below and apologize for any errors. . . .

The historical agricultural commons of England were extinguished in the enclosure movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. Yet the romantic image of rural life has survived, and the story has been repeated – in the genre of the Western, in the idea of the Internet as a frontier. In all of these, the price of the private property replacing the commons has been community and independence. . . .

I have been subscribed to J.D. Lasica’s blog for some time, so I looked forward to reading his book, Darknet: Hollywood’s War against the Generation¹. But despite the rich supply of research and interviews with insiders to the conflict around copyright and piracy, I found the book disappointing and lacking in depth.

Often people belittle those they disagree with as stupid or irrational. The music and film industries, for example, in their fight to keep music and movies off the Internet, are said to be blind to the wealth the technology offers them. I don’t agree. The entertainment conglomerates are certainly scoundrels. But I think their behavior is perfectly rational.

What is a creative or intellectual work? The assumption that the exercise of human creativity and thought produces discreet objects – works – lies at the heart of the concept of intellectual property. Indeed, this is what copyright and other IP laws do: they define parcels of ideas¹, then assign rights over those ideas to people. The commons, by contrast, treats intellectual and cultural works as shared entities. …

Can a commons of creative and artistic works repeat the success of free and open source software, despite the differences between these forms? …

I am opposed to the draconian form copyright has taken. The political process has been taken over by corporations – organizations whose legal responsibility places the interests of society beneath those of their shareholders (as Enron and other corporate scandals have shown, often they do not manage even that). Copyright has become a threat to democracy, freedom and justice. However, I do not believe that piracy is a constructive response. …

I have added Audience Labor: The Asymmetric Production of Culture to the research area of the site. I argue that much of the value in cultural works is produced by the audience, who both promote and construct new meanings from works. This is a challenge to strong copyright, which by inhibiting audience activity may actually limit the value of works (both the cultural value to the audience and the monetary value realized by culture industries). ...

Is talent scarce or abundant? Jon Udell suggests that this is fundamental to the argument over DRM: if talent is scarce, then it needs to be protected. I believe that talent is more abundant than it appears. …

I’m closely watching an experiment by Dennis Detwiller. He is a game designer, writer, and artist who is trying to fund his work by ransoming it to his fans. I am interested for two reasons: First, I would like to see a successful business model which pays artists but allows their work to be shared without excessive technological or copyright encumberances. Second, I’m a fan of Dennis’s work and of the style of game he writes for (Call of Cthulhu and similar pen & paper role-playing games). …

I attended a discussion entitled When is there too much copyright? at the Vancouver Public Library tonight. The room was quite full – there were probably about 80 people in attendance. The copyfighters were by far the majority: I only recall one person arguing for strong copyright from the floor; much of the discussion was criticism aimed at the lone proponent on the three-person panel. …

The threat of digital copying is not that it produces perfect duplicates, but that it produces heterogeneous diversity. It is not a sequel to the press, but a divergence from it. …

There were three interesting threads on Slashdot today – one about gay rights, one about open source, and one about PR – which I think capture how the politics of real people, in this case hackers, so often fails to fit in the conventional categories of left and right. . . .

Many people concerned about the direction technology is taking us have chosen to disengage from it. Some do it because they are technophobes, humanists or romantics. Some do it simply because they doubt they can make a difference. Some do it because they disbelieve the hype of a better future. Maybe they are right. But they are like citizens who oppose the government but choose not to vote. The people who control technology are the people who use it. They set its direction; they set its priorities. If people of good conscience do not take a role, the future will be bleak. . . .

Many people who believe current copyright laws are too strong have suggested that sharing benefits publishers. A number of artists agree, but publishers remain unconvinced. They continue to push for draconian legislation and digital rights management which interfere with our ability to use the content we pay for. Ken Camp argues that this will ultimately fail: content is not king, “content is a commodity . . . we are the value.” His argument is very similar to Steven Weber’s insight in The Success of Open Source. . . .

The Canadian government is proposing that educational intitutions pay a fee in order to use web materials which are publicly available. According to the The Globe & Mail, Schools would “pay a fee to a copyright collective, an organization representing creators of websites, to access material that is currently free.” So if you create content for the web, and a school in Canada uses it, then the school pays money to a third-party organization. . . .

WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, has approved a broadcasting treaty which threatens the public domain. If enacted in national laws, broadcasters could gain exclusive rights to make copies of works in the public domain. In effect, this is a modern-day attempt at enclosure, and makes a mockery of the very concept of a public domain. . . .

I like the idea of ebooks. I like it because physical books take space – they’re heavy, they’re hard to move, and they fill the house with shelves. An ebook isn’t much good when you want to read the whole thing (although I read Free Culture that way), and it’s not very useful when you want to curl up in bed. But many of the books I keep around are ones which I have already read. I will probably never read them cover-to-cover again, but I may want to look something up. Ebooks are good for this. They’re an even better solution for rare books impossible or difficult to get any other way. . . .

Canada considers changing its copyright laws to prevent the free distribution of music on the Internet. Some claim that such copying is an attack on the artist; others are the middle men who fear for their incomes in a golden age of art. We have more to fear from draconian laws than from a society that joyfully immerses itself in its culture. If we enforce our copyrights too sternly, we will not only take the joy from music and film and the entertainments which make humanity unique, we will also attack the thoughts, commentary, and debate which are the lifeblood of a democratic society. . . .

Copyright laws create a limited monopoly.  As copyrighted works (e.g. software) play such an important role in our economy, dramatic changes to these laws present serious economic risks.  We should take care to make such changes only where the benefits are clear.  Several of the proposed changes to copyright law, notably restrictions on reverse engineering and on devices that can be used to break copy protection, carry with them greater risks than benefits. . . .