The Commons: A Governance Approach

This lecture explores the concept of the Commons, focusing on the coexistence of two worlds: one where free and common knowledge is created collaboratively, and another dominated by large companies protecting proprietary content. It delves into historical examples like the tragedy of the enclosures and the tragedy of the commons, contrasting different views on common goods. The discussion extends to the public domain, intellectual property rights, and the evolution of software patents. Famous disputes, such as Von Neumann vs. Eckert, Mauchly, and the creation of the GNU General Public License, are also analyzed. The lecture concludes by proposing a governance model based on the commons to foster collaboration and financial sustainability.

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Related concepts (43)

DH-405: Foundations of digital humanities

This course gives an introduction to the fundamental concepts and methods of the Digital Humanities, both from a theoretical and applied point of view. The course introduces the Digital Humanities cir

Tragedy of the commons

The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. To exercise voluntary restraint is not a rational choice for individuals - if they did, the other users would merely supplant them - yet the predictable result is a tragedy for all.

Commons

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism.

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman, for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition.

Public Domain Mark

Public Domain Mark (PDM) is a symbol used to indicate that a work is free of known copyright restrictions and therefore in the public domain. It is analogous to the copyright symbol, which is commonly used to indicate that a work is copyrighted, often as part of a copyright notice. The Public Domain Mark was developed by Creative Commons and is only an indicator of the public domain status of a work – it itself does not release a copyrighted work into the public domain like CC0.

Public domain

The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission. As examples, the works of William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci and Georges Méliès are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired.