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Category: commons

On “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access,” by Peter Suber

On “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access,” by Peter Suber

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Peter Suber is a well-known open access advocate as well as the Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication in the Harvard Library. In “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access” Suber takes a measured approach at detailing the OA landscape, and of likening it to a commons. Suber details the difference between royalty-free and royalty-producing content, and suggests some options for convincing those who make royalties off of their academic work to consider switching to an open access…

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On “The Battle Over the Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment,” by Yochai Benkler

On “The Battle Over the Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment,” by Yochai Benkler

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In yet another excellent chapter from The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006), Yochai Benkler considers the digital environment (or sphere, or network, or whatever you like to call it), as an “institutional ecology.” He does this in order to examine the forces that shape the way we create, navigate, consume, and share electronic content, with a distinct eye to legal forces. Focusing on legal actions is critical; as Benkler notes, “we have seen a…

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On “An Environmentalism for Information,” by James Boyle

On “An Environmentalism for Information,” by James Boyle

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In “An Environmentalism for Information,” a chapter in The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (2008), James Boyle suggests that the intellectual property and OA movement needs to follow the lead of the environmentalism movement. Indeed, this may appear to be a tenuous or questionable analogy at first glance. Boyle is well aware of the skepticism that could be leveraged at such a claim, however, and he goes on to argue his position convincingly. Environmentalism, Boyle explains, was…

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On “Peer Production and Sharing,” by Yochai Benkler

On “Peer Production and Sharing,” by Yochai Benkler

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In this chapter from The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006), Yochai Benkler defines “peer production” as a term, and provides ample examples of peer production in networked, computational systems. For Benkler, peer production “characterizes a subset of commons-based production practices,” which are “self-selected and decentralized, rather than hierarchically assigned” (62). He also elaborates that there are four types of commons: 1) commons that are open to anyone; 2) commons that are only open to a…

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