Law Commons

Typology

Issues with Domain-Specific Legal Commons

Law commons

Commons Type	Sample Legal Forms	Sample Enforcement Vectors	Sample Tensions	Unsolved Problems
Atmospheric / Oceanic	Open sea doctrines; Deep seabed mining rights; fisheries quotas and accords; global trade law; Global administrative law (data-cooperation and sharing for the protection of common resources); Liberalism & int'l trade law (WTO & free movement in a "race to the bottom")	Nominally governed by IL; De facto governed by exercise of fiat enforcement powers on a selective state-by-state and case-by-case basis; Formal indeterminacy creates conditions for the necessity of an official “arbiter” of rights	'right to fish' -v- 'polluter pays principle' 'right to protect health, life and wellbeing of citizens and commons' -v- 'right to free movement of goods'
Intellectual Commons	Open-source standards; Creative Commons; Liberal copyright/IP licence schemes (patent pools); Whistleblowing	State-by-state enforcement; Emergence of global best practices & norms; Lex mercatoria	right to use -v- modify Wikipedia ←→ Wikileaks right to protect as critical national security infrastructure (Snowden) etc.	Censorship
Spectrum Commons	Wireless spectrum auctions; propertarian rights regimes; negotiated rulemaking; Net Neutrality debates	1G–4G (state-by-state); 5G (regional); Small-but-growing global players (e.g., Starlink)	Monopolization BigFirm -v- BigFirm Realpolitik Great Firewalls "Collect it all"	Capture by Industry; BigTechBrother
Blockchain Commons	Freedom of speech; Freedom of association; Due process rights	Strong positive IL basis but mainly state-by-state enforcement; Strong contractarian ethos, especially in consensus mechanisms & dispute resolution	open-source -v- propertarian rights regimes property -v- contract -v- commons	Self-Governance; Cartel Formation; Centralization; Capture; Fragmentation; etc.
Civic Commons	"Natural & positive legal participatory rights; Right to petition for redress of grievances; Due process rights; Neighborhood associations; HOAs, collective security	Municipal enforcement; Spotlight effects; Nonprofit cooperatives; Limited private right of action; No meaningful regional / global enforcement	public -v- private (em. domain) gross info asymmetries Sunshine Acts -v- Ag-Gag laws

— taken from: Law of (Blockchain) Commons 3

Discussion

Legal Commons for the Blockchain

"Legal frameworks that support pluralistic commons-based incentive initiatives represent our best chance at meaningfully sustainable ecological revival."

Crypto Law Review:

"What does an even broader “Law Commons” look like — far beyond narrow regimes like IP law, environmental law, the law of the sea, and so on?

Here are some some concrete characteristics:

• open-source geospatial mapping engines & data (e.g., OpenAR Cloud; #EthMaps);
• open-source jurisdictional maps, including private/public jdxns (#EthMaps + #EthLaw);

o* pen-source doctrinal law maps, including all the world’s legislative, regulatory, and public case-specific law (#EthLaw); etc.

This results in a view of view of the tech and law-stacks as mutually-constitutive and complementary.

Importantly, please note how the tech stack is front-running the law stack.

..

The key decision point for everyone today is whether we want the tech stack to be dominated by private BigTech corporations (with all the known and yet-unknown problems this produces), or whether we want a tech stack that is maximally resistant to capture by the BigTechBrothers of the world.

The answer should be clear.

Everyone benefits from open-source commons stacks. A world with, say, EthMaps & EthLaw* mapping engines is Pareto optimal to a world without these stacks.

At a minimum, these global databases serve mission-critical redundancy functions, a core utility proposition of projects like OpenStreetMap.

Our legal frameworks must protect global blockchain commons stack developers, because global blockchain commons developers are building technologies that protect us."

(https://medium.com/@cleanapp/law-of-blockchain-commons-3-1668df37f907)