Peer2Politics

David Bollier is a policy strategist, activist, and a leading voice in the commons movement. In a new book, Bollier and commons activist Silke Helfrich, both members of the Commons Strategies Group, collaborated to underscore the fact that commons are not things, resources or goods; they are social structures, processes and patterns.

The commons is a living organism and that’s precisely what needs to be studied: its aliveness

« We need to pioneer technical, organizational and financial forms that enable users to mutualize the benefits of their own online sharing ». Excerpted from David Bollier: “Our imaginations and aspirations must begin to shift their focus from open platforms to digital commons. Self-organized commoners must be able to control the terms of their interactions …

Patterns of Commoning: The Commons Strategies Group

Until the very end, my dear friend and colleague Burns Weston was passionate, hard-driving and committed to changing the world.  That’s why I was stunned to learn that Burns passed away yesterday, a few weeks shy of his 82nd birthday.  When he failed to make a scheduled telephone call, friends checked his condo and found him dead.  Burns was a well-known international law and international human rights scholar at the University of Iowa College of Law.  He was also founder of its noted Center for Human Rights.

An important new book offering a vision of commons-based law has just arrived!

"Seeing the Forest" makes a powerful point about the potential of open collaboration is successfully managing something as large and biophysical as a forest.

The idea of POC21 is to invent inexpensive, modular household devices, farm tools and energy systems that can be replicated cheaply and shared by anyone.

The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.  I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, "Reinventing Law for the Commons."  The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece.  The theme: this year's celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.

Common wealth trusts address the two greatest flaws in contemporary capitalism—its relentless destruction of nature and widening of inequality.

While much of the momentum to fight climate change is focused on political channels, there are parallel efforts using law to force government to take specific, enforceable actions to reduce carbon emissions. It’s a difficult battle, but in recent weeks two notable initiatives have gained further momentum – a court ruling relying on the public trust doctrine and a new human rights declaration that has broad international support.

We are accustomed to regarding open platforms as synonymous with greater freedom and innovation. But as we have seen with the rise of Google, Facebook and other tech giants, open platforms that are dominated by large corporations are only “free” within the boundaries of market norms and the given business models. Yes, open platforms provide many valuable services at no (monetary) cost to users. But when some good or service is offered for at no cost, it really means that the user is the product. In this case, our personal data, attention, social attitudes lifestyle behavior, and even our digital identities, are the commodity that platform owners are seeking to “own.”

Patterns of Commoning is arguably the most accessible and broad-ranging survey of contemporary commons in print.

The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.  I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, "Reinventing Law for the Commons."  The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece.  The theme: this year's celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.

Few commentators have mentioned that the Volkswagen scandal would not have happened if the software for the pollution-control equipment had been open source