Post #585640

2025-11-21 11:49 UTC

Nothing in Commons: the end of digital collective ownership? I&#39;m sharing a new text where I try to summarize some older thoughts that have been slowly fermenting in the past years regarding the dead-end in which the digital commons have landed. I discuss the discomfort of their growing ambivalence, and the incredible difficulty, but urgency to move forward beyond this concept and rethink collective objectives in relation to digital tools and practices. It is the follow-up of a copyleft/copyright/copywhat licensing workshop I gave at https://spookstad.boo. Amsterdam Alternative asked me to contribute an essay on the digital commons based on some of the topics discussed in the workshop for their web docu on collective ownership. The text is also available in Dutch, thanks to a translation by Menno Grootveld from Starfish Books. Illustration: @l03s https://www.collectiefeigendom.nl/en/ownership/digital-collective-ownership #commons #digitalcommons #freesoftware #opensource #creativecommons #licenses #freeculture #collective

Replies (3)

@msavoritias@tilde.zone 2025-11-21 12:54

@320x200 @l03s Thanks for this. You put into words a lot of the thoughts that i have had over the years involved in so called "free software". I was there multiple times when political struggles, economic struggles, supporting women or trans people where swipped aside. Or more recently supporting artists, privacy and everybody else that is exploited by LLMs, was deemed as "not free enough". We have a lot of work to do to start shaping our own ideas and communities by talking to people instead of just thinking we know. That said Im optimistic on the work @bonfire , @joinjabber and @spritely are doing. Also shameless plug my Cooperative Development Guidelines 😁 https://codeberg.org/msavoritias/Cooperative_Development_Guidelines @vladh you also maybe interested in this since we were talking about it the other day 🙂 #FreeSoftware #OpenSource

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@compudanzas@post.lurk.org 2025-11-21 15:29

@320x200 super interesting read! @l03s the illustration killed me 🥲😭👌🏾

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@despens@post.lurk.org 2025-11-22 11:58

@320x200 @l03s Great piece. Many threads to possibly continue with. What I currently find interesting is the new role and modes of organization of piracy. While already in the early 2000's it was known that for instance record labels would seed an album and watch downloads to help deciding what could be the next single, today piracy platforms and what you call the ICT industry seem to work hand in hand. Perhaps going beyond the undiscriminating claim to everything digital by ICT, piracy aggregators like Anna's Archive just by their technical and organizational infrastructure play a huge role to enable extraction, in case of AA even willingly. I wonder what you think about these developments?

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