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Contributors consider the concept of the commons historically and offer an analytical framework for understanding knowledge as a shared social-ecological system. They look at ways to guard against enclosure of the knowledge commons, considering, among other topics, the role of research libraries, the advantages of making scholarly material available outside the academy, and the problem of disappearing Web pages. They discuss the role of intellectual property in a new knowledge commons, the open access movement (including possible funding models for scholarly publications), the development of associational commons, the application of a free/open source framework to scientific knowledge, and the effect on scholarly communication of collaborative communities within academia, and offer a case study of EconPort, an open access, open source digital library for students and researchers in microeconomics. The essays clarify critical issues that arise within these new types of commons-and offer guideposts for future theory and practice.

This course surveys the political and economic history of the commons, its strengths and limitations over the centuries, and its burgeoning contemporary manifestations.  We will be guided by the writings of Elinor Ostrom, Peter Linebaugh, Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, Peter Barnes, Lewis Hyde and David Bollier as well as by a range of films, essays and Web resources.  The course will have direct conversations with policy experts, academics and activists who are at the forefront of commons work, and confront the ambiguities and perplexities of this still-emerging realm of thought and action.

"The common Western narrative of China is of a country whose businesses unfairly compete by stealing intellectual property from others and making money off of copycat technology. While undoubtedly a large amount of IP theft does happen in China, its hard to believe that anyone can look at China and not see innovation everywhere. I've noticed that this question of innovation in China comes up often among Western observers of China. Why? Do we feel that the playing field is unfair? Are we in the U.S. desperately looking for signs of an enduring competitive advantage even as we've shipped our entire manufacturing base overseas? I'm not sure, but the topic sure comes up a lot. Yes, China can innovate, but what kind of innovation? Jacob Hsu (Symbio) remarked that in Silicon Valley, investors and entrepreneurs are looking for "business model" innovation, which I interpreted to mean a new product that creates new markets. He characterized Chinese innovation as mostly incremental "technology" innovation in the past, but that increasing we were seeing highly innovative companies emerge, such as Tencent. He also highlighted the phenomenon of "shanzhai" as an example of innovation on a much smaller scale. The "shanzhai" consumer electronics economy in China is rapidly creating next generation connected devices out of laptop and mobile phone components, and that in most cases the minimum scale required to produce these units can be as small as a few hundred units to make money. Conventional wisdom equates intellectual property protection with innovation. But the "shanzhai" phenomenon challenges this idea. Could the lack of intellectual property protection create opportunities to remix, modify and mashup existing technology that creates an "innovation capability" for China's entrepreneurs even as the lack of IP protection prevents them from fully capitalizing on their successes (because the next guy will just rip them off)? In this

There are two common assumptions about the relationship between age and technical competency that rear their heads whenever the internet is discussed. The first assumption is that young people have a natural affinity for technology and both understand and use it in ways that older people cannot. The second is that anyone over the age of 60 is not only technically incompetent but also uninterested in the internet, using it only under protest. Both of these assumptions are flawed, yet have worked their way firmly into the public consciousness. Because they seem like 'common sense', these concepts are spread by policy makers, the media and technology companies alike. But if civil society associations take them at face value, they risk forming strategies and policies that are as flawed as the assumptions they are based on.

Excellent collection of articles on the public conciousness of the law (the Tamil Nadu Goondas Act) and its interactions with everyday affairs (video piracy).

"As the world economy increasingly centers on "memes, genes, and bits," new technologies permit new production models that threaten entrenched interests. As a consequence, we face a looming political battle that could reshape the information society. There are three main barriers to democratic participation in setting the rules of the information economy that bias the playing field in favor of entrenched interests and old models. The first is that the harms of bad A2K policy often take a long time to manifest themselves, making it difficult to instill a sense of urgency in the body politic and among policy elites. The current experience of "information overload" obscures increasing regulation of the use of knowledge. The second is that information policy issues tend to be highly technical and esoteric to the uninitiated, and difficult even for the initiated to analyze effectively. The third is that the promises of a world where knowledge is free as the air we breathe seems ephemeral in the face of the concrete harms claimed by those who would fence off the information commons."