[p2p-research] Fwd: Dual Licensing of Research in Renewable Energy

[Stan Rhodes]

Austin,

First, I look at the reason why a proposal is being made--the problem it
sets out to solve.  I'm glad you explicitly state this, because so often
readers are left to assume.  You say, "The current energy, environmental,
and economic crises all have roots dating back to the 1970s (even further in
fact), and thus far, neither free-market nor government solutions have
brought us out of this quagmire."

I'm skeptical that this frames a problem in a meaningful way. The crises and
failed solutions are vague. Which problem are you hoping to solve?  How do
you know it's a root problem, and not a symptom of something else?

Continuing, you do give a general answer of the proposal's goal: "bring
renewable energy solutions to market." This implies that the problem you
see, and are trying to solve, is that we don't have enough or good enough
renewable energy solutions.  Again, I'm skeptical that this follows from
your statement about the "quagmire."  Also, I'm left wondering, what are the
criteria for the quagmire being resolved?  Energy consumption will continue
to increase until the cost of energy rises enough to reduce consumption.
Implicit is the assumption that renewable energy can solve your stated
problem.  Plenty of people make this assumption, but I've yet to see
convincing evidence.  There are no guarantees focused R&D will solve
problems, particularly when breakthroughs are needed for viability.

You also say "The goal is not to prove that this model is or isn’t viable
(although I hope that it is). Rather my goal is to accumulate the skills
necessary to make even more substantive contributions in the future."  I
like this real goal, it's mine as well.  However, to accumulate skills for
more substantive contributions, you need to assess the viability of your
proposal--how else can the skills be built?

I'll now leave my critique of your premise for the proposal, and assume that
the purpose follows rationally from the problem, so we can look at the
economics of your proposal.

Michel asks if we need royalties, and includes some good points.  I'll be
covering similar ground, from a different angle.  If you included royalties,
you had a reason, so let's question it.  My question: what are the economic
implications of royalties in this situation?  I'll answer this with a few
points.

1. The point of having information in the commons is not just more eyes, but
also production at the lowest possible cost--in economics terms, the lowest
possible barriers to entry.  Crowdsourcing for private profit isn't new, and
doesn't fall under the general definition of p2p used by the p2pf.

2. Looking at the implicit reasoning behind the proposal, the ends
(renewable energy tech) are being used to justify the means (locking up
production with a royalty scheme).  The ends aren't worth the means, and I
don't know of any strong evidence that such a scheme would result in more
renewable energy innovation than making all IP part of an information
commons that actually lowers barriers to entry for producers.  In this
proposal, the barriers to entry for innovation are raised implicitly--an
innovator must add in royalty costs when producing derivative products.

3. The monitoring and enforcement infrastructure required to ensure rent
collection raises costs, for sure.  The public inevitably pays these costs
in one way or another.

Now, to revisit the concept of p2p.  All nonrival goods creation supported
by peer effort or money should be part of an accessible information commons,
if not also licensed in a GPLish way, i.e. "source" such as research data
should be made available (disclosing data should be a norm for studies now
anyway), and further derivative works--if applicable--must fall under the
same license.  All peers must be able to produce, using information in the
commons for free, to achieve the lowest possible barrier to entry.

-- Stan

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 2:58 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Austin,
>
> May I ask you a very basic question: do we really need royalties?
>
> Let's assume that a company designs and sells electronic circuit boards,
> but uses open designs. It still can sell the 'products' with a moderate
> profit, and re-invest part of that in its own research, while sustaining an
> overall commons with other companies similarly engaged. On top of that, it
> can keep a moderate amount of dually licensed improvements, of its own
> making. This is what I think happens in the OS world, dual licensing is what
> the companies themselves develop, on top of the open commons.
>
> Presumably, there's a problem with such a system for large upfront
> investments, but this could for example be supported by grant money for the
> public good, as if for example proposed for pharma research by Stiglizt and
> others.
>
> If adapt such a policy, don't you largely remove the problems with
> monitoring, rewarding etc..., i.e. you just retain it for the marginal
> improvements, like it is currently done, while the bulk is done in the
> commons and does not need anything but 'acknowledgement and recognition,
> which is automatically traceable in open design systems.
>
> Michel
>
>
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