A directory of social and political movements related to the P2P (participatory), open (open access to knowledge), and 'commons' paradigms.

Please read:

• Overview Essay: Prophets and Advocates of Peer Production. By George Dafermos. Chapter 7: The Handbook of Peer Production. Wiley, 2020

[1]

Introduction

Marco Berlinguer:

"The free culture movements comprise a wide range of experiences mainly emerging around the internet and the digital revolution. They have generally developed independently, but they are loosely aligned and show a mutually reinforcing dynamism – a ‘viral spiral’, as David Bollier terms it.

All these movements emerged as practical and cultural critiques of the aggressive attempts by corporations, aided by Northern governments, to extend intellectual property rights to knowledge, culture, information, communication and even organisms and data. The process has been described as ‘the second enclosures movement’ – the first being the enclosing of common land and turning it into private property in late and post-medieval England.

Following Felix Stalder, we can group these movements into three different clusters:

• the Free Software Movement, focusing on software source code;
• the Free Culture Movement, focusing on cultural goods; and
• the Access To Knowledge (A2K) movement, focusing on access to knowledge-intensive goods."

1. Benjamin Mako Hill explains the Difference between the Free Software and Free Culture Movement
2. Conflicts in open source discourse: review of idea currents in the free and open source software movement.
3. David Bollier: Is the Commons a movement?

Introductory Articles

• Immanuel Wallerstein: Antisystemic Movements and the Future of Capitalism

Sister Organizations

The following are most similar in intent:

• Commons Strategies Group
• Oekonux
• Open Knowledge Foundation
• On The Commons
• Francophone Network for the Commons

We support this call: Towards a Federation of DIY Communities!

Key Resources

• 'monitoring global protest movements' through CrowdVoice

Key Articles

• A strategy for the commons in the context of social transformation: Massimo de Angelis, Crises, Movements and Commons. Borderlands e-journal, VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2, 2012. [7]

See also:

1. David M. Berry, 2004. “The Contestation of Code: A preliminary investigation into the discourse of the free/libre and open source movement,” Critical Discourse Studies, volume 1, number 1 (April), pp. 65–89 [8]
2. Benjamin Mako Hill, 2005. “Towards a standard of freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement,” [9]
3. The Politics of the Libre Commons by David M. Berry and Giles Moss. First Monday, volume 11, number 9 [10]
4. On the Convergence of social movements to fight IPRs on information in various fields: 10 contributions
5. Stefan Meretz: Ten Theses About Global Commons Movement
6. The Evolution of Social Systems: A summary of processes of decay and renewal by Seb Paquet

Key Books

• Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. by Paul Hawken. Viking, 2007