[Commons-Law] Info-communism? Ownership and freedom in the digital economy

[Sunil Abraham]

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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