What should iCommons be doing?

What is the global commons and what does it need?

Tony Curzon Price

July 27th 2008

Heather Ford, executive director of iCommons, has opened an important discussion for everyone involved in creating new media for the public realm. iCommons grew out of the Creative Commons licenses, and was always intended to be the ``movement" that would underpin the licenses, encapsulating and giving expression to the ethos of openness, free culture, of sharing and of the transformative potential of technology that the Creative Commons licenses were but a tool of.

iCommons' institutional progress has been remarkable--it has captured the spirit of hope in technology and has been able to raise funding for five years. A real achievement--I know how hard this is--congratulations Heather and Ronaldo.

Congratulations also for putting out there the existential questions: what is iCommons for? and being true to the open ethos of the organisation in asking the question in such a public way.

iCommons should be the confederation that serves the projects that constitute the global commons

My view is that iCommons should be a confederation of projects; the projects are all trying to be micro-movements, to develop a sense of identity, purpose, community ...iCommons needs to be the umbrella, to provide the federative infrastructure; to lobby for its confederal members; to give project leaders and managers a resource that they can use. As a confederation, iCommons ought to live above the movements that it encourages. It ought to be a movement of movements.

Let me explain my thinking. The best place to start is Zittrain (2008)'s schema of the organisations that work on the Internet. I gave an account of this schema in this article(Curzon Price, 2008).

iCommons' Federative domain

My guess is that all of the projects that feel themselves to be part of the iCommons live in Zittrain's communitarian corner. More than that, I believe that most of the content providers in the communitarian corner ought to be federated by iCommons. In the domain of code, or of protocols, or of hardware, the communitarian corner has other ``movement" organisations looking after projects' interests. Not in the realm of content.

The communitarian corner is made up of many micro-institutions. This is the world of hierarchy--there are clear rules, goals, framing systems. We are not in the polyarchy of the market or of anarcho-hacking. The micro-institutions are typically under-funded, relying on good will, idealism and a small number of dedicated key individuals. These are groups whom iCommons should consider as its clients. They need support, and they are the natural vectors of the ethos of the global commons.

What does this mean in practice?

What would the federation deliver, and to whom? A federation makes sense to supply common, collective goods. Those goods that are of shared usefulness between members. A federation is a sort of club. Here are a few examples of what iCommons could be supplying (maybe it is already and I do not know ...):

represent iCommon interests to important corporate/industry actors. For example, does Google's search take the CC origination issues seriously? I believe not, as I have written about before, in the context of Google sending out News alerts for our material only once it has been reproduced by others, and as originated by others.
provide a directory of projects aimed at funders--a bit like what TechCrunch does for SV start-ups, or VentureWire does for venture-financed deals.
provide central s/w infrastructure, for example an open-id server and authentication service ...this is a piece of functionality which most of us need and which can be shared; iCommons could provide -- either in-house or out-sourced-- a central facility. Not having these sorts of facilities is the sort of practical problem that will push us into the ``corporate / federalist'' corner of Zittrain's schema -- if there is no Commons solution to identity infrastructure, I might as well use Google's or Yahoo's...
develop iCommons as a brand. Most of us use CC licenses because of a shared ethos more than because of the details of the legalities of the licenses. iCommons should come to be seen to represent that ethos, and content-associated with the mark should satisfy certain user expectations beyond the legal detail.

How should iCommons work as an organisation?

Projects that consider themselves to be under the iCommons should register with iCommons. iCommons should think of these projects as its customers--it ought to exist to serve them, as the centre in a confederation ought to be at the service of members. iCommons ought to poll projects regularly--not only to keep status up-to-date, but also to prioritise what it should be doing.

Heather's Revisioning Message

In 2005, iCommons was established as an outgrowth of Creative Commons with an objective to ?advance the wider dissemination of non- commercial sharing of scientific, creative and other intellectual works by the general public?. Creative Commons was the sole member, guarantor and sponsor of the charity, providing organisational and financial support.

Today, iCommons has a small, agile core team with its own policies, procedures and culture; we?ve expanded our membership (Creative Commons is now one of five members of iCommons rather than the sole member), raised core funding for the next five years and initiated a series of new collaborative projects, and as of 31 March, 2008, have become an independent organisation separate from Creative Commons.

Following our independence, and because we realise that we could be doing so much more, we thought it important to examine ourselves and develop a vision to guide us through an open revisioning process.

This vision is of a world where there is widespread participation in global innovation, digital culture and knowledge-building initiatives, based on equitable access to technology, education, science and culture ? a world where people are using the organizing power of technologies and the spirit of the commons to work together to solve crucial global challenges.

iCommons could play an important role in catalyzing connections between people from the global South and North, with diverse backgrounds in order to develop a mutual understanding of the role of the digital commons in enabling innovation, participation and cultural expression in diverse regions of the world.

Achieving this will be no easy task. The ``global'' commons is far from global right now, and we're all trying to solve very different problems with very little insight on how we can develop solutions that are inclusive of people throughout the globe.

This is where we need your help to decide what an independent iCommons can be doing to support the global commons in the future. There are obviously limits to what we will be able to do, but we believe that this community can have a major impact on developing truly global solutions to challenges that are defining our generation.

? How can we build an identity for ourselves that is distinct from our former parent (Creative Commons) whilst retaining a partnership that is mutually beneficial?

? What should iCommons do to best achieve our vision?

? What kinds of governance changes need to occur in order to operationalise this new vision?

? How can we achieve all of this while adhering to our core values and principles?

? How can we extend our impact beyond the iSummit and our other projects?

? How can we build this movement into something that is truly global?

Today starts an open discussion that will continue through the iSummit and shortly beyond. I will be giving a keynote address (webcast live from the iSummit website) to introduce the revisioning process and there will be physical spaces at the iSummit for participants to answer these questions. We encourage people who are unable to attend to answer these questions in the comments facility below.

The board will then review your suggestions directly after the iSummit and they will publish the minutes from their discussion.

We appreciate your input and look forward to a new future that truly brings together the community to grow the global commons.

Please respond on the article http://icommons.org/blogs/revisioning- icommons

Bibliography

Curzon Price, T.: 2008, From zittrain to aristotle in 600 words, openDemocracy .
http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/tony_curzon_price/from_zittrain_to_ar istotle_in_600_words.

Zittrain, J.: 2008, The Future of the Internet (and how to stop it),Princeton University Press.
http://yupnet.org/zittrain/.

tony curzon price2008-07-28