"Towards a positive recognition of commons-based research and innovation in international norms"

by Philippe Aigrain

In the recent years, a powerful trend has developed internationally of creating voluntarily knowledge that can freely exchanged and used. This was in part a reaction against the extension of restrictive property-like rights. But it also built up as a natural possibility in the information era where knowledge and creations can easily be represented in information, and can be created, processed and exchanged using information and communication technology.
Those willing to give this status of commons to information and knowledge artefacts had to simulate it using contractual arrangements or permission notices. Those who wanted to make some usage of copyrighted works or patented matter had recourse to exceptions and limitations. Remarkable achievements have been done under these licensing and exceptions/limitations mechanisms from free software to open science, from freely accessible publications to publicly accessible libraries. However, generalising these achievements to other fields, and making them possible in different areas of the world would be greatly facilitated if a direct recognition of the "voluntary commons" were included in international norms.
This recognition would affirm that knowledge, information and all types of information tools that are given a commons status are a common wealth of humanity and a great asset for the future advancement of knowledge. To these commons the public in all countries has positive rights of contribution and usage, users have responsibilities, and norms have duties (for instance any extension of IP titles or change in execution mechanisms must be assessed taking in account their effects on the commons before they can be enacted).
The talk will refer to precedents in international norms that can be used to build this recognition. It will outline the concrete possible benefits for developing countries of such of a recognition, which will only progressively occur, but should be a shared perspective along the path.

About the author

Philippe Aigrain (born 1949) is the Founder and CEO of Sopinspace, Society for Public Information Spaces a company that provides free software-based solutions for the public debate by citizens of policy issues and for collaborative work over the internet. He acts at international level as an advocate for the information and knowledge commons, and tries to address challenges in making commons-based cooperation sustainable. He is the author of 'Cause commune : l'information entre bien commun et propriété" (http://www.causecommune.org, Arabic translation to be published in the 1st quarter of 2007).
Philippe Aigrain was trained as a mathematician and computer scientist and active as a media (video, music, photographs) software researcher and in science policy. He was head of sector "Software technology" within the European Commission research programmes, where he initiated the policy in support of free / open source software innovation. He has authored many papers in computer and information science, sociology and history of technology, most of which are accessible under Creative Commons licenses from his blog at http://paigrain.publicdebate.net