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