Own Nothing, Have Everything

- original Napster slogan

"Peer production, peer governance, peer property",

Excerpt of Article by Michel Bauwens - link : http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=87

Introduction

"Peer to peer social processes are bottom-up processes whereby agents in a distributed network can freely engage in common pursuits, without external coercion. It is important to realize that distributed systems differ from decentralized systems, essentially because in the latter, the hubs are obligatory, while in the former, they are the result of voluntary choices. Distributed networks do have constraints, internal coercion, that are the conditions for the group to operate, and they may be embedded in the technical infrastructure, the social norms, or legal rules.

P2P social processes more precisely engender:

1) peer production: wherever a group of peers decided to engage in the production of a common resource

2) peer governance: the means they choose to govern themselves while they engage in such pursuit

3) peer property: the institutional and legal framework they choose to guard against the private appropriation of this common work; this usually takes the form of non-exclusionary forms of universal common property"

See our entry on Peer Property, a form of the Common and creating a Commons

Typology

= a clear distinction is to be made between resources owned in common (common property) and resources for which no property rights have been defined (open access).

G.G. Stevenson compares these three forms in terms of group limitation and extraction limitation. [1]

3 Property Institutions:

Open Access Property:

- Limited: members only, unlimited extraction - Unlimited: open to anyone, unlimited extraction

Common Property: members only, extraction limited by rules

Private Property: one, extraction limited by individual decision

Introductory Articles

• Introduction to Private and Common Property: Achim Lerch, The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons. [2]

See also:

1. Kevin Kelly: In a dematerialized economy, sharing is better than owning
2. Dmytri Kleiner: The Modular Company, Open Capital, Venture Communism: How are they related
3. The three modalities of Production Sharing, i.e. working together for a common pool, without individual exchange or barter: 1) Labor Quota System‎; 2) Fair-Share Labor System‎; 3) Anti-Quota Labor System‎
4. Marjorie Kelly: Not Just For Profit: Emerging alternatives to the shareholder-centric model could help companies avoid ethical mishaps and contribute more to the world at large. Explores three new-style corporate designs: 1. stakeholder-owned companies; 2. mission-controlled companies; and 3. public-private hybrids.
5. It is very important to distinguish the four different degrees of freedom], culminating in Triple-Free Software and peer production. An insight from Tere Vaden.
6. The Property Taskforce is a good resource to learn about Property regimes

Special topic: Commons-oriented Software Licenses

1. Richard Stallman argues forcefully, that we should not use the muddled concept of IP, and explains Why Software Should Not Have Owners.
2. Patrick Anderson explains the difference (and deep similarity) between Ownership of Software vs. Ownership of Goods, and says open property models could be extended once we accept that the user (and not the worker) is the owner of the physical means of production. See also his proposal for User Ownership
3. Karl Fogel explains how the General Public License uses Copyright to obtain the opposite effect of guaranteeing sharing: Stallman's Jiujitsu
4. The Libre Labyrinth. Navigating the Maze of Free and NonFree Licenses. By Greg London, 2008: describes an objective way to understand how various FLOS licenses work, and how different FLOS licenses compare to one another
5. A Comparative Ethical Assessment of Free Software Licensing Schemes. By S.Chopra and S. Dexter: how to choose between Free Software, Open Source Software, or proprietary software, from an ethical point of view
6. Copyleft and the Theory of Property. Mikhaïl Xifaras (French)

Special topic: property and conflict in free culture communities:

1. Play Struggle, excerpts of the book Hacking Capitalism by Johan Soderbergh.
2. Klang, Mathias, "Avatar: From Deity to Corporate Property - A Philosophical Inquiry into Digital Property in Online Games
3. Contrasting Proprietary and Free/Open Source Game Development, Alessandro Rossi & Marco Zamarian
4. Moore, Christopher. 2005. "Commonising The Enclosure: Online Games And Reforming Intellectual Property Regimes." Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society 3(2): examine the potential for computer game studies to contribute to an understanding of an alternative intellectual property regime known as the commons
5. Who Owns the Mods? by Yong Ming Kow and Bonnie Nardi. First Monday, Volume 15, Number 5 - 3 May 2010 [3]

Short Citations

1.

The difference between open access and defined property rights (private or common property), by contrast, is the difference between an unregulated and a regulated condition. The difference is fundamental.

- Achim Lerch [4]

2.

For Stevenson, a “private property, common property, open access trichotomy” ultimately exists. He compares these three forms in terms of group limitation and extraction limitation. Characteristic of the common property form is that both the group and the extent of resource use are limited by the individual members.

- [5]

Source: STEVENSON, G.G: Common Property Economics. A General Theory and Land Use Applications. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.1991, p.58

Long Citations

Alan Rosenblith:

"Imagine a world where property is owned because it is being well stewarded rather than ownership being a priori to stewardship. Much of the worst behavior we see in the economy would be impossible, because the second any firm stopped stewarding their properties for the benefit of the larger community, they would no longer own their properties (intellectual or otherwise). In this world ownership is derived from good stewardship, rather than the other way around." (http://alanrosenblith.blogspot.com/2010/09/21st-century-property-rights.html)