Browsing by Author "Bollier, David"

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Academia as a Commons
(2010) Bollier, David
"How open technologies can help higher education expand collaboration, innovation and public access to knowledge."
Alain Lipietz's Wisdom
(2009) Bollier, David
"French political thinker offers deep insights into commons and politics, markets and history."
Artists vs. Copyright Law
(2010) Bollier, David
"World Fair Use Day explains why artists need the right to remix and mash up culture."
Artists, Technology and the Ownership of Creative Content: Summary Report
(2001) Bollier, David
From Introduction: "As the title of the conference suggests, discussions about 'artists, technology and the ownership of creative content' range across a large territory of law, politics, technology, art, history and the mysterious dynamics of creativity itself. Yet for all the complexities of this topic, one fact is inescapable: the digital revolution is provoking a wide array of novel quandaries. Answers are elusive, it seems, because the technologies are disrupting many existing economic and political relationships, as embodied in law and markets – yet forging new alignments of interests and new social consensuses is notoriously difficult work."
Barcelona Charter for Free Culture is Released
(2009) Bollier, David
"Historic statement by commoners takes the offensive against regressive Internet policies."
Bolivia Stands Up for Common Wealth
(2010) Bollier, David
"Evo Morales's bold bet against privatization pays off."
British Beer Drinkers Learn to Buy Local
(2010) Bollier, David
"Pub customers are converting their favorite watering holes into local coops."
Can That Data be Shared?
(2010) Bollier, David
"The Panton Principles seeks to promote 'open data' commons in science."
Can the Information Commons Be Saved?: How Intellectual Property Policies Are Eroding Democratic Culture & Some Strategies for Asserting the Public Interest
(2001) Bollier, David
From introduction: "It is the dark side of the digital revolution: how a variety of new intellectual property policies, in conjunction with new technologies, are greatly empowering sellers at consumers' expense; fostering market concentration over open competition; homogenizing our society's diversity of information and expression; constricting the public domain from which new creative works and business innovations derive; supplanting free access to information with pay-per-use regimes; introducing intrusive new forms of surveillance of individuals' use of copyrighted material; and subverting the open standards and 'gift culture' of the Internet which have been the very engines of our turn-of-the-century information explosion. This memorandum is an attempt to explain how these disturbing trends are remaking our society in pernicious ways."
The Clash of Markets and Commons - and How It Affects Science, Economic Performance and Democracy
(2004) Bollier, David
"Most of the controversies spawned by the molecular revolution are tremendously complex, so I wade into this territory with some trepidation. I am not a scientist or lawyer, nor even a biotech policy expert. Yet the history of taming dangerous technologies nuclear power, synthetic chemicals, automobiles shows that outsiders often offer valuable, catalytic perspectives. With that conceit, I enter this dialogue as an informed citizen irregular and non-scientist whose expertise lies in a meta-realm: how shall we talk about the ethical, social and democratic implications of genetic technologies? I believe the framing of the issues is at least as important as the so-called facts, because the questions we ask will determine what we regard as relevant facts. The significance of our answers will depend on how we frame our discussion in the first place."
Commoners as an Emerging Political Force
(2008) Bollier, David
"The question that I want to address today is: 'How might free culture begin to relate to other social movements?' I will start with several quick examples of what I call 'digital citizenship.' I think you will quickly connect the dots."
The Commons and Emergent Democracy
(2007) Bollier, David
"New genres of online collaboration are producing robust new types of 'democratic practice' online, claims David Bollier. Whether and how they will affect conventional politics and governance may be another issue, since it is not yet clear that the new social technologies will significantly intervene in the conduct of power and make it more accessible and accountable."
The Commons as a New Sector of Value Creation
(2008) Bollier, David
"I believe we are moving into a new kind of cultural if not economic reality. We are moving away from a world organized around centralized control, strict intellectual property rights and hierarchies of credentialed experts, to a radically different order. The new order is predicated upon open access, decentralized participation, and cheap and easy sharing. This puts it too starkly, but we are living through a shift from a fairly static, stable order focused on things to an order that is highly dynamic and inter-subjective—one that revolves around social relationships and context."
The Commons as a Template for Transformation
(2014) Bollier, David
"This essay argues that, in the face of the deep pathologies of neoliberal capitalism, the commons paradigm can help us imagine and implement a transition to new decentralized systems of provisioning and democratic governance. The commons consists of a wide variety of self-organized social practices that enable communities to manage resources for collective benefit in sustainable ways. A robust transnational movement of commoners now consists of such diverse commons as seed-sharing cooperatives; communities of open source software programmers; localities that use alternative currencies to invigorate their economies; subsistence commons based on forests, fisheries, arable land, and wild game; and local food initiatives such as community-supported agriculture, Slow Food, and permaculture. As a system of provisioning and governance, commons give participating members a significant degree of sovereignty and control over important elements of their everyday lives. They also help people reconnect to nature and to each other, set limits on resource exploitation, and internalize the 'negative externalities' so often associated with market behavior. These more equitable, ecologically responsible, and decentralized ways of meeting basic needs represent a promising new paradigm for escaping the pathologies of the Market/State order and constructing an ecologically sustainable alternative."
The Commons as an Emerging Model for Knowledge Creation and Governance
(2002) Bollier, David
From p. 1: "This conference is not just about the problem of the anti-commons in knowledge--it is also about the promise of the commons. The anti-commons problem is chiefly about the over-propertization of knowledge resources, an alarming trend that is driven by powerful market and technological forces. The processes by which an anti-commons occurs is surely complicated--and I hope to learn more--but so are the processes for affirmatively creating, fortifying and legally protecting the commons."
The Commons Rising
(2006) Bollier, David; Rowe, Jonathan
"The idea of the free market has become so widespread its hard to remember when public stadiums werent named for private corporations. But evidence is mounting--from catastrophic climate disruption to unprecedented disparities in wealth--that our present corporate-dominated economic system is leading to ecological and social disaster. There must be an alternative."
The Cornucopia of the Commons
(2001) Bollier, David
"A few years ago, the newspapers of New York City were ablaze with a controversy about dozens of plots of derelict land that had been slowly turned into urban oases. Should these beautiful community gardens that neighborhoods had created on trash-filled lots be allowed to stay in the public domain? Or should the mayor and city government, heeding the call of developers, try to generate new tax revenues on the reclaimed sites by selling them to private investors?"
Corporate Trawlers Try to Enclose Pacific Fish
(2009) Bollier, David
"Can the privatization of West Coast fisheries be stopped?"
Defending the Scholarly Commons
(2004) Bollier, David
From p. 1: "Who would have thought that scholarly communications, a topic that was fairly stable and mundane, would become such a volatile, complex stew of digital technologies, library management, federal funding policy, and changing market practices? Of course, in talking about scholarly communications, we are not just talking about high-tech capabilities and new business models. Our real topic, I would suggest, is the proper mission of the university in American society and how best to actualize it. We are talking about what is a university all about. The proliferation of new digital technologies and market structures is forcing us to confront this core question. It’s about time. It’s now clear that the Internet and other digital innovations are not transient phenomena. They are here to stay, and they are transforming the most basic practices of science and scholarship, not to mention the very structures of the corporation and the global marketplace. It’s time that we consider how these changes enhance or impede the basic goals of the university... Our challenge is not to lose our bearings as we come to terms with the digital future."
The Digital Republic
(2009) Bollier, David
"From Barcelona, David Bollier outlines the struggle to secure and expand the commons."
The Enclosure of Apples
(2009) Bollier, David
"Modern agriculture has vastly reduced the natural variety of apples."
Ending the Free Market Hoax
(2009) Bollier, David
"House reclaims student loan program from profligate banks."
Expanding the Circle
(2010) Bollier, David
"Can digital commoners become more cooperative and federated with each other?"
Free Culture Gets Political
(2009) Bollier, David
"Digital commoners of diverse stripes get serious about public policy."
The Future of Creative Control in the Digital Age
(2001) Bollier, David
From p. 1: "We need to be start by asking some larger questions, such as: What levels of copyright protection are truly needed, as an empirical matter, to reward artists sufficiently to assure a steady supply of their work? And just who do we mean by 'artists' anyway? Just the familiar stars who make the big bucks -- or the far larger cohort of talented individuals who are trying to make a living from their creativity – or the corporations that buy, own and market this creativity? As part of this inquiry, we also need to begin to revisit the 'cultural bargain' that constitutes copyright. If the public, through its representatives in Congress, is going to be in the business of granting exclusive property rights, what is it getting in return? How can we assure that ordinary people can have access and use of copyrighted works through the kind of 'information commons' that any democratic society needs?"
The Future of International Environmental Law: A Law of the Ecological Commons?
(West Group, 2012) Bollier, David
"The first section of the chapter looks at the conceptual and historical background of the commons, as seen through readings by Garret Hardin and commons scholars such as Elinor Ostrom and Lewis Hyde. The next section introduces new notions of stewardship over the long term, often in contrast to regimes of private property rights and exclusive individual ownership for market gain. This accounts for the many deep tensions between private property law and the commons. A third section surveys a number of contemporary ecological commons and proposals for new commons such as acequias (community-operated waterways) that enable Native Americans to steward scarce water supplies in New Mexico; the Potato Park in Peru that empowers indigenous people to assert stewardship rights over a genetically valuable potatoes; community fishing regimes for endangered fisheries; and 'stakeholder trusts' and 'social charters' as a new paradigms of governance of ecological resources. The point is that we need new sorts of institutional innovation to manage the atmosphere, oceans and fresh water more responsibly. Finally, a fourth section considers the future of the commons and ecological governance that nation-states should strive to support."
The Ginseng Commons of West Virginia
(2010) Bollier, David
"Folklife and landscape in southern West Virginia."
The Gleaners and I
(2009) Bollier, David
"Filmmaker Agnès Varda explores the practice of gleaning in modern-day France."
Globalization, Cultural Diversity and the Commons: Remarks by David Bollier
(2005) Bollier, David
From p. 1: "If the advocates of cultural diversity hope to take our message to the mainstream, I believe our biggest challenge is to develop a more compelling grand narrative for explaining how cultural diversity originates, why it is important and how it can be sustained. In global trade circles, the prevailing story for talking about culture is the story of the market. 'Globalization' is all about expanding the governance rules of markets to all corners of the globe. It is about subjecting social relations and resource management to a matrix of property rights, contracts and market exchange. According to this mainstream story, 'value' is created by enclosing something in an envelope of private property rights, and through contracts to buy and sell those rights for money. This will result in robust markets and 'development.' According to the market story, this is how 'value' is created – with 'value' serving as a synonym for 'money.' But we all know, at a certain level, that the real value of the arts, culture and civic life cannot be expressed through any economic measurement. What is the value of indigenous artwork? What is the value of ethnobotanical knowledge? What about Native American folk stories or traditional designs?"
The Growth of the Commons Paradigm
(MIT Press, 2007) Bollier, David
From page 27: "...it can be a formidable challenge to explain that the commons is more pervasive than we may realize, and that it can be a highly effective way to create economic and social wealth. That is precisely what this book seeks to demonstrate and explain. A commons model is at work in the social systems for scholarly communication, in the work of research libraries as they gather and share knowledge, and in the behavior of scientific communities as they generate and disseminate their research. A commons model is at work in the new EconPort, which manages a large economics literature for its user community, and in the Conservation Commons, which is building a 'global public domain' for literature about the environment and conservation. ..."The commons has too many variations to be captured in a fixed, universal set of principles. Each commons has distinctive dynamics based on its participants, history, cultural values, the nature of the resource, and so forth. Still, there are some recurring themes evident in different commons. A key goal of this chapter is to showcase the many different sorts of commons operating in American life today and to illustrate how, despite significant differences, they embody certain general principles."
Hard-Wired to Cooperate
(2009) Bollier, David
"Humans are naturally inclined to cooperate and create social norms, the foundation for building commons."
Is the Commons a Movement?
(2004) Bollier, David
"The free software and open source movements are perhaps the most active, mature and self-aware advocates of the commons. But in truth, there is a teeming constellation of constituencies who are embracing the idea of the commons to advance their agendas: environmentalists, libraries, scholars, media reforms and many others. I believe we are on the cusp of a commons movement: a messy, uncoordinated, bottom-up assertion of a new political philosophy cultural outlook and vehicle for creative wealth, both economic and social."
A Landmark Food Sovereignty Forum in Mali
(2007) Bollier, David
"Farmers from around the world rally under the banner of food sovereignty."
Les Communaux Sont-ils un Mouvement?
(2004) Bollier, David
"J'aurais voulu effectuer une recherche sur Google cinq ans plus tot sur le terme 'commons.' Elle aurait probablement retourne quelques centaines de liens tout au plus. Aujourd'hui j'ai interroge Google sur le sujet et environ 6.3 millions de resultats sont apparus. Pour moi cela represente la preuve la plus tangible de l'emergence discrete d'une transformation politique et sociale. Les mouvements du logiciel libre sont peut-etre les promoteurs les plus actifs, matures et conscients des communaux. Mais en verite, il y a une dense constellation de groupes qui embrassent l'idee des communaux pour affirmer leurs orientations: les ecologistes, les bibliothecaires, les savants, les reformistes des medias et bien d'autres. Je crois que nous sommes a l'aube d'un mouvement pour le bien commun: une assertion chaotique, desordonnee, bottom-up d'une nouvelle vision politique, culturelle et philosophique et du vehicule d'une richesse creative, tant economique que sociale. Ce developpement est quelque chose de tres nouveau et relativement ancien. Sa nouveaute se constate dans l'immense variete de communaux representes a cette conference: logiciel libre, archives ouvertes, Wikipedia, partage de fichiers de proche en proche (peer-to-peer), initiatives de science ouverte, le mouvement d'acces libre aux publications savantes, le logiciel de reseaux sociaux, etc. Ces innovations constituent les communaux digitaux. Pourtant, aussi nouveaux que ces developpements puissent etre, les communaux ne sont pas tellement neufs. En fait ils sont aussi vieux que l'espece humaine qui a toujours ete ancree dans des communautes de confiance et de cooperation sociales - un fait aujourd'hui confirme par les biologistes de l'evolution, les neurologues et les geneticiens."
Leveraging Scientific Commons to Foster Innovation, Access and Affordability
(2005) Bollier, David
"If the goal of this conference is how to harness public benefit from biotechnological innovation, I would like to talk about the importance of the commons as a complement to the marketplace. We can learn some important lessons from the way that commons and markets interact in domains as diverse as science, the Internet, music, the visual arts, and even fashion. The theme I wish to develop is that the commons is a source of innovation and value in its own right, and can be a potent force in spurring public benefits from biotechnological research."
Leveraging the Commons to Foster Innovation, Access and Affordability
(2005) Bollier, David
From p. 2: "Intellectual property protection can provide significant and necessary incentives to creators and businesses to invest in new works. But increasingly, the propertization of knowledge is becoming an end in itself, disconnected from any concern with actual social outcomes..."
Massachusetts Pioneers a New Standard in Openness
(2006) Bollier, David
"State of Massachusetts pioneers a new era of openness in software."
The Missing Vocabulary of the Digital Age: The Commons
(2003) Bollier, David
"As a theoretical matter, it’s easy to believe in 'paradigm shifts,' the concept of erratic intellectual progress made famous by historian of science Thomas Kuhn. It’s much harder to admit that our own consciousness may be imprisoned within the iron bars of invisible paradigms and that this captivity may limit our ability to see new realities and the Next Paradigm. Alas, this is precisely the problem plaguing so many wars over the control of creativity and knowledge in the digital age. New modes of communication email, the World Wide Web, collaborative software, WiFi Internet access, rip-and-burn CDs, and dozens of other digital technologies are radically transforming the central nervous system of our society. They are changing the nature of creativity, public dialogue and social interaction. Entirely new genres of expression and knowledge are being created."
NAFTA, Mexican Corn and the Commons
(2010) Bollier, David
"How American industrial agriculture threatens Mexican biodiversity and social stability."
New Era for Commons-based Development in Africa?
(2009) Bollier, David
"Ostroms Nobel validates cooperative strategies for land management."
New Politics of the Commons
(2007) Bollier, David
"One of the most stubborn problems in confronting the pathologies of the neoliberal political order is the limitations of our language. We do not have an adequate public vocabulary to describe the plunder of globalized markets. We have trouble highlighting the social inequities that are built into conventional economics and political discourse. We do not have a grand narrative with compelling sub-plots to set forth an alternative vision, one that can both stir the blood and show intellectual sophistication."
Open Source Hardware
(2009) Bollier, David
"The participatory ethic of open source software has become so widespread these days that it is migrating into some unexpected places... like musical instruments, tractors and ecological technology."
Open Source Water
(2008) Bollier, David
"Tap'd NY competes by selling bottles of New York City's delicious tap water."
Our Psychic Connections to Nature
(2010) Bollier, David
"Now there is a name for the emotional distress caused by ecological destruction."
A Paradise Built in Hell
(2010) Bollier, David
"Anyone who sees the world through the lens of economics is likely to see humanity as an unruly mass of selfish individuals clamoring for as much as they can. It’s a dog-eat-dog jungle that is only constrained by the rule of law and government. How is it possible, then, that human beings are capable of such spontaneous altruism, resourcefulness and joy when faced with disaster? Why, in the midst of earthquakes and fires, do people so intuitively self-organize themselves into communities of mutual aid, opening their hearts to utter strangers and sharing each other’s burdens and joys? Why, in short, are we so often exemplary people under the most horrific conditions when 'normal life' finds us alienated from each other and locked into our self-made shells of grievances, prejudices and human disconnection?"
The Perils of Property Speak in Academia
(2006) Bollier, David
"The challenge that we face is not just about lawsuits and public policy. It’s also about a larger cultural pathology – the idea that knowledge and creative works should be owned outright an absolutely. I call this political and moral orientation Property Speak. It a belief that knowledge ought to be enclosed in tight little envelopes of property rights. The idea, of course, is that copyrights and patents reward people for their creative labors, encourages their work to be sold in the marketplace, and thereby generates wealth. What’s not to like? The premise is that knowledge cannot achieve its true value without being propertized. After all, if knowledge is free to share – if it has no price -- how could it possibly be valuable?"
The Power of Open Data
(2010) Bollier, David
"How large-scale sharing and collaboration are helping to solve medical mysteries."
Public Assets, Private Profits: Reclaiming the American Commons in an Age of Market Enclosure
(New America Foundation, 2001) Bollier, David
"Many of the resources that Americans own as a people - forests and minerals under public lands, public information and federally financed research, the broadcast airwaves and public institutions and traditions - are increasingly being taken over by private business interests. These appropriations of common assets are siphoning revenues from the public treasury, shifting ownership and control from public to private interests, and eroding democratic processes and shared cultural values. "In the face of this marketization of public resources, most Americans do not realize that some of our most valuable assets are collective and social in character - our 'common wealth.' Collectively, U.S. citizens own one-third of the surface area of the country, as well as the mineral-rich continental shelf. Huge deposits of oil, uranium, natural gas and other mineral wealth can be found on public lands, along with rich supplies of timber, fresh water and grazing land. Beyond environmental resources, the American people own dozens of other assets with substantial market value, including government- funded research and development, the Internet, the airwaves and the public information domain. "Our government, for its part, is not adequately protecting these assets. Instead, it is selling them off at huge discounts, giving them away for free, or marketizing resources that should not be sold in the first place. These include, public lands, genetic structures of life, the public's intellectual property rights, and cherished civic symbols. "The growing appropriations of public assets - and the spread of market values to areas of life where they should not go - could be called the 'enclosure' of the American commons."
The Public Domain Manifesto
(2010) Bollier, David
"The public domain — long a stepchild in the fierce politics of copyright law — is finally starting to come into its own. A diverse array of individuals and organizations associated with COMMUNIA, the European 'thematic network' on the digital public domain, have issued a major manifesto explaining the importance of the public domain to democratic culture. The manifesto has already garnered endorsements from thousands of people and dozens of organizations. It has also been translated into seventeen different languages, including French, Czech, Chinese Mandarin, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Serbo-Croation and Turkish. This powerful show of support is helping to mobilize the many constituencies that depend upon the public domain. It also puts the corporate armies of copyright maximalists on notice that their attempts to enclose the public domain will be actively resisted."
Putting People Back into Economics
(2009) Bollier, David
"Elinor Ostrom's studies of the commons built a whole new paradigm."
Reclaiming the American Commons
(2001) Bollier, David
"Today's conference is an attempt to build a rough scaffolding for understanding the many commons in American society. We will be looking chiefly at two things - one, a new analytic framework of the commons as applied to diverse areas of public policy and American life. And two, we will be looking at a number of specific commons that are being abused. Our nine panelists will talk about a number of areas in which business interests are appropriating our public assets ranging from public lands to the Internet to nature to public schools and cultural spaces. In my remarks, I will focus chiefly on the first item, the overarching analysis, the framework for understanding this thing called the commons. Then, for the rest of the day, the three panels will focus on the dynamics of the specific commons about which they are knowledgeable."
Rediscovering Our Common Wealth
(2002) Bollier, David
From p. 4: "These forgotten assets and social resources can be called the American Commons. They sit plain as day in our midst. They are indispensible to our daily lives and to the proper functioning of education and science, culture and democracy, creativity and the economy. Yet as people of the market, we are blinded by some deep and entrenched cultural prejudices."
The Rediscovery of the Commons
(2003) Bollier, David
"The prevailing discourse for talking about the Internet is that of the market. But economic categories are too parochial for understanding our broader needs as citizens and human beings in the emerging cyber-polity. They also fail to understand how many websites, listservs, open source software programs and peer-to-peer file sharing systems function as commons – open, community-based systems for sharing and managing resources. It turns out that peer production is often a more efficient, creative mode of value-creation than a market as well as more humanistic. The commons paradigm helps us understand this fact because it recognizes that value-creation is not just an episodic economic transaction, as market theory holds, but an ongoing process of social life and political culture. When will we recognize that the commons plays a vital role in the economic and cultural production of our time?"
The Rise of Collective Intelligence: Decentralized Co-Creation of Value as a New Paradigm of Commerce and Culture
(2007) Bollier, David
"Every year, the Information Technology Roundtable of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program examines a timely issue that is posing perplexing new challenges for business, culture and society. In 2007, the gathering met to explore the many ways in which network-based communities are becoming socially and economically significant. The phenomenon has been called 'decentralized co-creation of value' — the process by which social communities and loose networks of people use Web 2.0 platforms to generate useful new types of collective intelligence. Although the value that is created tends to be social in origin, it has far-reaching economic implications for business and nations. Online communities are often rich sources of innovative ideas, specialized knowledge, timely and sophisticated market intelligence and niche consumer demand. Moreover, because this decentralized value-creation is occurring online - and therefore is widely available — it is capable of diffusing rapidly and disrupting entrenched institutions and societal practices."
Saving the Information Commons: A New Public Interest Agenda in Digital Media
(Public Knowledge, 2002) Bollier, David; Watts, Tim
"Sweeping changes in our nations communications infrastructure and markets over the past twenty years have radically changed the topography of the public sphere and democratic culture. But the mental maps which many people use to conceive the public interest in communications hark back to circa 1975, a time when the traditional broadcast model dominated and there were only three commercial television networks, cable TV consisted of community antennae to reach rural areas and even the VCR had not yet been unleashed. In the 1970s, the public interest in broadcasting was about the Fairness Doctrine, general content guidelines and public television subsidies."
Squandering Our Genetic Heritage
(2010) Bollier, David
"Russian court jeopardizes historic seed bank -- and our ability to adapt to climate change."
Stealth Treaty Seeks Strict Controls Over Internet
(2009) Bollier, David
"Never heard of ACTA? That's exactly what Hollywood and other copyright industries want."
A Stem Cord of a Web of Relationships
(2010) Bollier, David
"Participants in Ogallala Commons meditate on what it means to be a commoner."
Strengthen the Commons - Now!
(2010) Bollier, David
"A group of commoners who participated in Interdisciplinary political salons of the Heinrich Bill Foundation in Germany in 2008 and 2009 have collectively authored a terrific new manifesto and statement about the commons. 'Strengthen the Commons - Now!' was written in German, but below is a recent English translation, chiefly by Michelle Thorne and Silke Helfrich (I gave a minor assist). A Spanish translation has recently been issued as well, which can be seen here."
The Subversive Power of Commons-Based Businesses
(2009) Bollier, David
"Credit unions offer better credit cards than banks."