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Program for the FutureA Summit & Workshop on Collective Intelligence

2008-12-09

The Commons as a collective intelligence meta-innovation

Mike LinksvayerCreative Commons

Photo by asadal · Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 · http://flickr.com/photos/68242677@N00/2117153416/

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Creative Commons .ORG

● Nonprofit organization, launched to public December 2002

● HQ and ccLearn in San Francisco● Science Commons division at MIT● ~60 international jurisdiction projects,

coordinated from Berlin● Foundation, corporate, and

individual funding● Born at Stanford, supported by Silicon

Valley

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Enabling Reasonable Copyright

● Space between ignoring copyright and ignoring fair use & public good

● Legal and technical tools enabling a “Some Rights Reserved” model

● Like “free software” or “open source” for content/media– But with more restrictive options– Media is more diverse and at least a

decade(?) behind software

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Six Mainstream Licenses

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Lawyer Readable

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Human Readable

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Machine Readable<rdf:RDF xmlns="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nl/"> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Reproduction"/> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Distribution"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Notice"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Attribution"/> <prohibits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#CommercialUse"/> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#DerivativeWorks"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#ShareAlike"/> </License></rdf:RDF>

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Machine Readable (Work)<span xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"><span rel="dc:type" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dc:title">My Book</span> by <a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" href="http://example.org/me">My Name</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>. <span rel="dc:source" href="http://example.net/her_book"/>Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a rel="cc:morePermissions" href="http://example.com/revenue_sharing_agreement">example.com</a>.</span>

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DRMfree

“DRM Voodo”by psd licensed under CC BY 2.0http://flickr.com/photos/psd/1806247462/

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In Innovation, Meta is Max

“The max net-impact innovations, by far, have been meta-innovations, i.e., innovations that changed how fast other innovations accumulated.”

Robin Hanson (Economist)http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/meta-is-max---i.html

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Collective Intelligence

Meta innovation?

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Commons

Meta innovation for Collective Intelligence?

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$2.2 trillion

Value of fair use in the U.S. Economy

http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/publish/news/First-Ever_Economic_Study_Calculates_Dollar_Value_of.shtml also see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7643

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Cyber terrorism(Cyber terror war on)

Privacy breaches

Loss ofGenerativity

Lock-in

Surveillance

Censorship

Suppressionof innovation

Electoral fraud

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Threat categories

● Legitimate security issues● Protectionism● Politics and power● Security theater and fear-based

responses (driven by all of above, not just legitimate security issues)

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What digital freedoms needed for beneficial collective

intelligence?● Keep same rights online/digitally that we

(should anyway) have offline/IRL● Permit innovation and participation

enabled by digital world even if not possible before (probably follows from above)

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How building the commons (free software, free culture, and

friends) helps

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Security

● Data shows FLOSS is more secure● Security through obscurity doesn’t work● FLOSS encourages a heterogeneous

computing environment● Free software and free culture both

allergic to DRM and other mechanisms that sacrifice security to other goals

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Protectionism

● Peer production undermines policy arguments for protecting knowledge industries

● Free software and free culture both allergic to DRM

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Politics and power

● Free software and culture improve transparency

● ... and the ability of all to participate● Peer production works against

concentrated power — doesn’t require concentrated production structures and lowers barriers to entry

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Security theater and fear

● Access to facts mitigates fear and allows rational evaluation of responses

● Commons work against three previous threats that drive security theater and fear

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Can the success of the (digital) commons alter how we view

freedom and power generally?

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“The gate that has held the movements for equalization of human beings strictly in a dilemma between ineffectiveness and violence has now been opened. The reason is that we have shifted to a zero marginal cost world. As steel is replaced by software, more and more of the value in society becomes non-rivalrous: it can be held by many without costing anybody more than if it is held by a few.”

Eben Moglen

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“If we don’t want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others.”

Richard Stallman

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i.e., we can form collective intelligences instead of forced collectives ... and still “change

the world”

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Building the commons is key to the future of collective

intelligence● Politicians and corporations are

unimaginative ... they need to see solutions, or they react in fear

● A dominant commons makes many collective stupidity scenarios much less likely

● Beneficial collective intelligence needs universal access to culture, educational resources, research ... in machine-readable form

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Much less Meta ... 2 of the excellent bootstrap(?) tools CC

uses and builds

● Semantic MediaWiki ... turn your MediaWiki into a database and database application platform

● RDFa ... bridging the Semantic Web and the Web we all use

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Detail of image by psd · Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 · http://flickr.com/photos/psd/1805374441