Greg bond wrote:
>
>
> On 4/25/07, *James Grimmelmann* <james grimmelmann.net
> <mailto:jamesgrimmelmann.net>> wrote:
>
> CC has adopted the word "freedom" because
it is both accurate according
> to this very old meaning and has positive (and
appropriate) emotional
> associations. The way in which CC is using the
word is not identical to
> the precise ways in which FSF uses it. That
difference does not
> necessarily mean that anyone is being dishonest, or
confusing, or
> manipulative.
>
>
> Uh huh.
>
> So, when creative COMMONS picked the name COMMONS
> and started the website with pictures of cows grazing
in
> a COMMONS, that wasn't confusing? That was a honest
> and accurate representation of what CC was all about?
>
> Because I still have a problem with fact that creative
COMMONS
> has as its most commonly used license CC-NC-blah.
"Common" is a very interesting word. It comes
form the same Greek word
that gives us commune and community. Many of the modern
meanings seem
to have come into English at about the same time. In the
fourteenth
century it was used as a noun meaning" the common
people," as a synonym
for "community," and as an adjective meaning
"common to all mankind" or
"shared in common," among other meanings. In the
fifteenth century, it
was used, often with an "s" at the end, to
describe common land -- that
belonging to all the members of a community together, not
divided into
individual parcels. Sometimes, the land itself was
privately owned, but
others in the community had the right to enter and graze
cattle ("common
of pasture"), or dig up turf ("common of
turbary"), or cut firewood
("common of estovers").
With the enclosure movement, the "commons" became
a more politically
loaded term. Landowners who erected fences and expelled
others became
wealthy. "The commons" referred not just to the
common access to land
but to an idea of what had been lost more generally: a
tradition of
solidarity, of production for the community rather than for
the market,
and for a greater scope of individual freedom.
In this century, two great intellectual movements have taken
up the
banner of the commons. The first is the environmental
movement.
Hardin's phrase "tragedy of the commons" was a
warning against the
commons: we need private property or government regulation
to prevent
environmental catastrophe. Later scholars have turned that
idea on its
head, demonstrating how community management of resources
can often
result in wise stewardship that coexists with well-managed
sharing.
Indeed, these forms of common ownership often outperform
property and
regulation. This observation is tied to a broader claim;
many forms of
indiscriminate property rights are environmentally toxic,
because the
property rights fail to include the consequences for
"the commons" --
those things that all humanity depends on. This is not the
"commons" of
successful common ownership; it is a very different animal
that shares a
name and part of an intellectual history.
The second great movement is the information revolution.
Scholars and
creators have recognized, in many different domains, the
value of
sharing as form of exchange and production. If I freely
give my ideas
away, others can build on them, and all I have cast away
will be
returned a hundredfold. This point works for software, for
art, for
education, for reference works, for news, and for much more.
It works
because information can be shared and replicated without
consuming it,
so there is often no need to give people proprietary rights
over it in
order to prevent them from wasting it. The idea of the
"commons" thus
has become a way of explaining that information is being
shared, and not
hoarded.
"Commons" has a riot of different meanings in
there today. If you talk
to an economist doing fieldwork with common-ownership
communities, with
an environmental ecologist, with an Internet artist, or with
a
free-software-minded lawyer, you will get four very
different
definitions of what makes something a "commons."
"Commons" works as a
term in part because all of them can mean something
different by it and
yet still know that they are part of a shared enterprise.
Creative "Commons" keys off a great many of those
meanings. James Boyle
would emphasize the link to environmentalism -- we're saving
our
intellectual environment from pollution and enclosure.
Artists would
point to the possibility of giving away parts of their work
in the
spirit of generosity and liberation. Some lawyers would
note that CC
licensing creates a body of work for which no legal
permission is
required for use. Some people might point to the resonance
with the
social value of the old ideals that no one could be kept
away from the
commons, which was always available for the community.
None of these meanings are wrong.
James
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