Debate about the Copyfair Proposals of the P2P Foundation
Discussion
Benjamin J. Birkinbine:
"DuLong de Rosnay and Musiani (2016) are not the only scholars wrestling with how to advance decentralised peer production forward to mount a challenge to capitalism. One such debate took place in a series of articles published in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism, and Critique in 2014. The debate stemmed from a proposal made by Bauwens and Kostakis (2014). Noting the contradictions of commons-based peer production being co-opted by capitalist firms, as well as the growing co-operative movement and worker-owned enterprises, Bauwens and Kostakis (2014) propose a convergence that they call ‘open co-operativism’ that would ‘combine Commons-oriented open peer production models with common ownership and governance models such as those of the co-operatives and the solidarity economic models’ (356). To facilitate such a movement, the authors suggest the creation of an alternative intellectual property licence that would require reciprocity to benefit the commons. They frame this as a shift from a ‘communist’ licence like the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allows anyone – including capitalist firms – to use the commons-based resource, toward a ‘socialist’ commons-based reciprocal licence which, they argue, is exemplified by the Peer Production License (PPL) as proposed by Kleiner (2010). Such a licence would allow for commercial use of the licenced resource, but would require reciprocity to the community. This means that licensing fees would be charged to for-profit companies that use the resource. This, then, would allow the community to establish a co-operative, which could receive the licensing fees as income that could then be used to maintain the commons. In effect, the goal is for the community to retain the surplus value of their production. The authors further argue that the goal of this project is to transform the mode of production toward the commons. Furthermore, they claim that without such a transition commons-based peer production ‘would remain a parasitic modality dependent on the self-reproduction through capital’ (Bauwens and Kostakis, 2014: 360). Meretz (2014) critiqued Bauwens and Kostakis’s proposal on a couple of fronts. First, Meretz critiques the ‘logic of exclusion’ embedded within the proposal for licensing. He argues that free software is not a commodity; it can be appropriated and used by everyone, but the GPL prevents its transformation into a commodity. Second, he critiques the authors’ use of ‘reciprocity’ by claiming that licences are never reciprocal. Rather, licences grant or deny access or use. Reciprocity must involve people who are reciprocal in a social relationship. Meretz’s own view is that social transformation is not possible by building a counter-economy for progressive social movements. In his words, ‘it is not possible to out-compete capitalism … to be better than capitalism on its own terrain in order to finally get rid of it’ (Meretz, 2014: 364). Rather, we need a new social logic of producing our livelihood, which will not be built upon existing logics of exclusion that mark commodity production. Indeed, capitalism must constantly open up spaces for new logics to emerge so that they can be exploited. In the end, Meretz views the proposal for a new socialist licence as a mechanism for accessing the economy rather than a means for societal transformation. Rigi (2014) offers his own views on these proposals by revisiting some foundational concepts from Marx’s work (i.e. value, profit, surplus value, and rent), then demonstrating how Bauwens and Kostakis fall short in their application of these concepts. His point is not to impose Marx’s own views on Bauwens and Kostakis, but rather to suggest that they offer concrete definitions for how they use these terms, which would aid in the development of a theory. In addition, Rigi agrees with Meretz’s claim that further engagement in the market economy on behalf of peer production communities would only lead to those practices being assimilated into capitalism. However, he also critiques Meretz for underestimating the communist nature of the GPL. Rigi’s point is that the GPL already requires reciprocity by stipulating that any derivative work produced with GPLlicenced code must also be made available under the same licence. In this regard, Rigi argues that the GPL abolishes knowledge rent, as there is no ‘owner’ of the commons who can charge rent for using the commons. Furthermore, Rigi points to companies like IBM who decided to release their proprietary code to the commons so that it could be integrated with Linux. In so doing, the scope of available commons-based code expanded through the specific mechanism of the GPL.
In the final section of his article, Rigi (2014) outlines his own vision for how radical social transformation is possible. His goal is to examine how it would be possible to use the principles and lessons from the production of digital commons to revolutionise material production. Rigi identifies two fundamental problems that must be overcome for this to be possible: territorialisation and automation. First, the production of Linux can occur regardless of geographic location, and contributions to the digital commons can be shared easily across space in very little time. This is because anyone with access to a computer (and the necessary coding skills) is able to contribute to Linux or another FLOSS project. The same cannot be said of material production. Noting both the transportation and ecological costs associated with moving material production across space, Rigi concludes that any attempt at applying commons-based peer production to material production must be geographically bounded so that the production site is in close proximity to the consumption site. Second, material production is increasingly automated, and the human contribution in this sphere is increasingly relegated to science, design, and software. Therefore, ‘a combination of a Linux mode of cooperation with automation will generalise peer production to all branches of production’ (Rigi, 2014: 400). However, certain spheres of social life will remain untouched by automation: symbolic activities (like artistic expression, knowledge, etc.), and care for humans and nature (education, ensuring ecological survival, etc.). Rigi concludes his article with some speculative proposals for how we might bring about some of these changes by specifically arguing for something he calls ‘revolutionary peer producing cooperatives’. I will revisit this proposal later in the conclusion, as it dovetails nicely with some of my own proposals. In the meantime, however, one can begin to imagine how a set of diverse and distributed communities could begin to implement practices associated with commons-based peer production. Indeed, we have already seen examples of this around the world, but these communities still need to be linked through common interests to mount a significant challenge to existing institutions. This is where De Angelis’s (2017) use of ‘boundary commoning’ becomes useful."