Abstract
During the two last decades, speeded up by the development of the Internet, several types of commons have been opened up for intellectual resources. In this article their variety is being explored as to the kind of resources and the type of regulation involved. The open source software movement initiated the phenomenon, by creating a copyrightbased commons of source code that can be labelled ‘dynamic’: allowing both use and modification of resources. Additionally, such a commons may be either protected from appropriation (by ‘copyleft’ licensing), or unprotected. Around the year 2000, this approach was generalized by the Creative Commons initiative. In the process they added a ‘static’ commons, in which only use of resources is allowed. This mould was applied to the sciences and the humanities in particular, and various Open Access initiatives unfolded. A final aspect of copyright-based commons is the distinction between active and passive commons: while the latter is only a site for obtaining resources, the former is also a site for production of new resources by communities of volunteers (‘peer production’). Finally, several patent commons are discussed, which mainly aim at preventing patents blocking the further development of science. Throughout, attention is drawn to interrelationships between the various commons.
Chapter PDF
References
BSD, The BSD license (1998). Available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php.
P.B, de Laat, Open source software: A case of swift trust?!, Challenges for the Citizen of the Information Society, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference, ETHICOMP 2004, edited by T.W. Bynum, N. Pouloudi, S. Rogerson, and Th. Spyrou (University of the Aegean, 2004), pp. 250–265.
P.B. de Laat, Copyright or copyleft? An analysis of property regimes in software development, Research Policy 34(10), 1511–1532 (2005).
FSF/GNU, GNU General public license, version 2 (1989/1991). Available at http://www.gnu.orgllicenses/gpl.html.
FSF/GNU, GNU Free documentation license, version 1.2 (2002). Available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html.
HapMap, International HapMap Public Access License, version 1.1 (2003). Available at http://www.hapmap.org/cgi-perl/registration.
M.H. Heller, The tragedy of the anticommons: Property in the transition from Marx to markets, Harvard Law Review 111(3), 621–688 (1998).
L. Liang, Guide to open content licenses (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, 2004). Available: http:l/pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/opencontentpdf.
OSI, The open source definition, version 1.9 (1997–2005). Available at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php.
PLOS, Open-access publication of medical and scientific research: A PLOS background paper (2003). Available at http:llwww.plos.org/downloads/oa_background.pdf.
P. Suber, Open Access overview (2004/5). Available at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
de Laat, P.B. (2006). Internet-Based Commons of Intellectual Resources: An Exploration of their Variety. In: Berleur, J., Nurminen, M.I., Impagliazzo, J. (eds) Social Informatics: An Information Society for all? In Remembrance of Rob Kling. HCC 2006. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 223. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37876-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37876-3_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-37875-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-37876-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)