[p2p-research] Fwd: Milton Mueller: Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the digital economy]

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patrice Riemens <patrice at xs4all.nl>
Date: Apr 18, 2008 10:05 AM
Subject: Milton Mueller: Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the
digital economy]
To: iedereen at waag.org



Really a good article - highly recommanded  (spelling? ;-)

Goes really to the core of what I always call the 'non trivial
differences' between Free software and Open Source software - as concepts
and constructs. There are a number of core statements in this article,
which I leave to you to fish out and reflect upon. There are also a number
of remarks that could be made on (rather than against) it, the most
important one, immo, is that the argument would gain from being
supplemented with what I call the 'Adbusters  grand theory', namely that
the discussion about individual freedom and private property has been
poisoned beyond reprieve by the current economic and political
dispensation in which corporations (especially the larger ones) have
managed to usurpate the rights of individuals- and thereby deprive the
latter of these very rights.

Milton Mueller is the XS4ALL Professor at Delft T.U. - so it figures ;-)


Cheers, and Enjoy!
patrizio & Diiiinooos!



---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [Commons-Law] Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the
digital economy
From:    "Sunil Abraham" <sunil at mahiti.org>
Date:    Fri, April 18, 2008 04:08
To:      "commons-law" <commons-law at sarai.net>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the digital economy
Milton Mueller



Abstract


This paper takes a new look at the debate over commons and property in
information and communications. It warns against recreating the old
communist-capitalist ideological divide by framing the movement for
informational commons as "info-communist." The spectre of communism
haunts the movement because of an unresolved ideological tension in its
ethical and philosophical foundations. The case for free software and
open information contains both deontological appeals to the virtues of
sharing, and consequentialist arguments against the growing
intrusiveness of the institutional and technological mechanisms used to
enforce exclusivity in the digital economy. The paper argues that the
deontological case is a dead end that leads to info-communism. The
strongest case for open access and freedom in information and
communications is grounded in a liberalism that takes maximizing
individual freedom as its objective and relies on creative
complementarities between property and commons regimes as means to that
end.

Full Text:

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2058/1956
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