On the Commons Blogs

In earlier guerilla raids on inaccessible government information, public-interest crusader Carl Malamud has “scraped” public-domain documents from poorly designed and fee-based government websites and re-published them on his own servers. It’s proven to be a highly effective tactic. It embarrasses the government agencies by exposing how non-transparent and citizen-unfriendly they really are.

Writing in The New Scientist, Mark van Vugt of the VU University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands examines the social psychology of successful commons. His piece, “Triumph of the Commons: Helping the World to Share,” proposes “four key conditions for the successful management of shared environmental resources: information, identity, institutions and incentives,” or what he calls the 4i framework. (Thanks to Silke Helfrich of commonsblog.de for passing this along!)

Will free-market economies ever pay due respect to the non-market resources that enable them to function? The atmosphere’s role in making life possible; the ocean’s role in generating fish and biodiversity; the role of bees in pollinating crops; the role of stay-at-home parents in raising the next generation — all of these “services” are invaluable, but because they exist outside of the market, and thus have no price tags associated with them, they have no value in market theory.

There is something ethically distasteful about anyone “owning” our DNA, yet that’s exactly what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does. It grants patents in genes (among other things). With the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, which recognized patents in lifeforms in 1981, one-fifth of the human genome is now privately owned.

Carrie MacLaren is one of the few people I know with the subversive wit and tenacity to critique the scabrous assaults of market culture on our basic humanity. I first got to know her almost ten years ago as a fellow-copyfighter. She was about to launch a brilliant project, The Illegal Art Exhibit, which put on display dozens of images, music and text that had been declared illegal under copyright or trademark law.

If economic growth and planetary survival are on an inexorable collision course – as Peak Oil, global warming, species extinctions and many other trends suggest – then what is the path forward?

While channel surfing a few weeks ago I stumbled across a PBS American Experience program about Walt Whitman. It touched me and took me back to my first experience of his poetry.

It’s always invigorating when scholars and activists interested in the commons get together.  Last Friday more than 100 of us convened in Milwaukee to learn how commons activism stretches back to the Magna Carta – and how seeds, sky, airwaves and city spaces spaces are vulnerable commons that need to be protected.  The symposium was called, “From Magna Carta to the Sky Trust:  The Historical Arc of the Commons,” and it was hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Kathryn Milun of the Tomales Bay Ins