Digital Commons

Posté le 8 avril 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, Felix Stalder

Commons are holistic social institutions to govern the (re)production of resources, articulated through interrelated legal, socio-cultural, economic and institutional dimensions. They represent a comprehensive and radical approach to organise collective action, placing it “beyond market and state” (Bollier & Helfrich, 2012).

They form a third way of organising society and the economy that differs from both market-based approaches, with their orientation toward prices, and from bureaucratic forms of organisation, with their orientation toward hierarchies and commands. This governance model has been applied to tangible and intangible resources, to local initiatives (garden, educational material), and to resources governed by global politics (climate, internet infrastructure).

Digital commons are a subset of the commons, where the resources are data, information, culture and knowledge which are created and/or maintained online. The notion of the digital commons is an important concept for countering legal enclosure and fostering equitable access to these resources.

This article presents the history of the movement of the digital commons, from free software, free culture, and public domain works, to open data and open access to science. It then analyses its foundational dimensions (licensing, authorship, peer production, governance) and finally studies newer forms of the digital commons, urban democratic participation and data commons.

URL : Digital commons

DOI : https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1530

Commons-Based Peer Production in the Work of Yochai Benkler

Posté le 14 octobre 2018 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Vangelis Papadimitropoulos

Yochai Benkler defines commons-based peer production as a non-market sector of information, knowledge and cultural production, which is not treated as private property but as an ethic of open sharing and co-operation, and is largely enhanced by the Internet and free/open source software.

This paper makes the case that there is a tension between Benkler’s liberal commitments and his anarchistic vision of the commons. Benkler limits the scope of commons-based peer production to the immaterial production of the digital commons, while paradoxically envisaging the control of the world economy by the commons.

This paradox reflects a deeper lacuna in his work, revealing the absence of a concrete strategy as to how the immaterial production of the digital commons can connect to material production and control the world economy.

The paper concludes with an enquiry into some of the latest efforts in the literature to fill this gap.

URL : Commons-Based Peer Production in the Work of Yochai Benkler

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v16i2.1009

Clearing the garden: ScholarlyHub as a new non-profit digital commons

Posté le 29 mars 2018 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : April Hathcock, Guy Geltner

Open scholarly communications are being suffocated by for-profit and large-scale academic publishers on the one hand and undermined by commercial academic social networks on the other.

A possible part of the solution to both is ScholarlyHub, a new initiative to create a non-profit digital commons. ScholarlyHub proposes to serve as a social ‘front end’ of the open access movement and offer an aggregating space for diverse initiatives in the world of scholarly communications, from mentoring and pre-print services and data storage, to peer review and publication.

This article explains the pressing need to ‘clear the garden’ in order to enable research to flourish in its natural environment and details the progress of ScholarlyHub to date, looking ahead with optimism to a more collaborative and open future.

URL : Clearing the garden: ScholarlyHub as a new non-profit digital commons

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.398

Commons Praxis: Toward a Critical Political Economy of the Digital Commons

Posté le 9 mars 2018 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Benjamin J Birkinbine

The concept of the commons has provided a useful framework for understanding a wide range of resources and cultural activities associated with the creation of value outside of the traditional market mechanisms under capitalism (i.e., private property, rational self-interest, and profit maximization).

However, these communities often continue to intersect with capital and the state attempts to appropriate their resources. Recent scholarship has sought to unpack some of the contradictions inherent in the claims made about the revolutionary potential of the commons by offering conceptual frameworks for assessing commons-based projects.

This paper builds upon this research by developing a two-pronged argument. First, by drawing examples from the free software movement, I argue that critical political economy provides the most useful analytical framework for understanding the contradictions inherent in the relationship between capital and the commons. Second, I argue for a commons praxis that attempts to overcome some of these contradictions.

Within this discussion, I build on the notion of ‘boundary commoning’ to understand organisational form, and I develop the concept of ‘subversive commoning’ for understanding various forms of commoning that seek to undermine the capitalist logics of the digital commons.

URL : Commons Praxis: Toward a Critical Political Economy of the Digital Commons

Alternative location : https://triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/929