Why &#8220;Commons&#8221; language gives me hives
<p>A bit of blogging for the record here. Doc Searls <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;The Commons&#8221; and &#8220;the public domain&#8221; might be legitimate concepts<br />
with deep and relevant histories, but they&#8217;re too arcane to most of<br />
us. Eric Raymond has told me more than once that the Commons Thing<br />
kinda rubs him the wrong way. [...] (Maybe he&#8217;ll come in here and<br />
correct me or enlarge on his point.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what I emailed him in response:</p>
<p><span id="more-221"></span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>My problem with the language of &#8220;the commons&#8221; is that to me it it<br />
sounds, at best, like idealistic blather. At worst, and far more<br />
usually, it sounds like an attempt to conceal all kinds of individual<br />
decisions about cooperation under a vague collectivist metaphor so the<br />
individuals who made those decisions can be propagandized and jerked<br />
around.</p>
<p>The moment you start talking about &#8220;the commons&#8221;, you almost<br />
automatically start attributing needs and wants and rights to &#8220;the<br />
commons&#8221; that aren&#8217;t simply the needs and wants and rights of the<br />
people who made the decisions that define that commons.  And that&#8217;s<br />
dangerous &mdash; before you know it, you have power-seekers telling you<br />
that your needs and wants and rights are <em>overidden</em> by those of<br />
&#8220;the commons&#8221;, even if (or especially if) that commons was partly<br />
your creation in the first place.</p>
<p>This is the same reason I never talk about &#8220;society&#8221; &mdash; because<br />
&#8220;society&#8221; does not, properly speaking, exist as a moral or ethical<br />
agent.  Talking about &#8220;society&#8221; as though it has needs or wants or<br />
rights of its own is simply a form of ventriloquism used by some<br />
individual to seek power over others &mdash; oh, no, I&#8217;m not pursuing my<br />
personal agenda, I&#8217;m acting for the good of &#8220;society&#8221;, and please<br />
avert your eyes from anything I gain by so doing.</p>
<p>Our public life is already corrupted enough by this kind of<br />
ventriloquism.  I&#8217;ve tried to shape the language of open-source<br />
advocates so as to at least not make the problem worse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Doc agreed with these points in an email reply, but pointed out<br />
that the open-source community has allies (Larry Lessig, in particular)<br />
who are emotionally attached to &#8220;commons&#8221; language.  This is true;<br />
it&#8217;s a bug, not a feature.</p>
<p>But this is almost a detail. I fully agree with the central point<br />
of Doc&#8217;s essay.  (I chastised him gently for burying it amidst too<br />
much clutter.)  There is a war of metaphors going on right now: the<br />
Internet as place versus the Internet as pipes.  Is it an agora<br />
(that handy Greek word that hovers somewhere between &#8220;marketplace&#8221; and<br />
&#8220;public square&#8221;) or a &#8220;content-delivery system&#8221;?</p>
<p>How people think about this matters.  As Doc points out, if the<br />
net-as-pipes metaphor prevails, then issues like free-speech rights<br />
and open access become subordinated to property rights over the<br />
pipes. If the net-as-agora metaphor prevails, free speech trumps<br />
property rights &mdash; even when the &#8220;agora&#8221; space is privately owned,<br />
our mental framework about it is that it&#8217;s a place where public<br />
expression is subject to <em>minimum</em> control.</p>
<p>Doc and Larry point out that the big corporations pushing for<br />
semi-infinite copyright extensions have been winning battles because they<br />
have presented a compelling narrative in which copyright is <em>property</em>,<br />
and Americans (by and large) think property is good.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s our problem: we need to come up with a compelling narrative<br />
of the Internet-as-agora <em>without</em> challenging the<br />
property-is-good assumption.  The FSF has been trying to disassociate<br />
copyrights/patents/trademarks from property for years (RMS regularly<br />
lectures people on why the term &#8220;intellectual property&#8221; is bad) but it<br />
has failed.  We need better tactics than that.  We need a propertarian<br />
case for the Internet as agora.</p>
