Public assets, private profits: reclaiming the American commons in an age of market enclosure

7. Can the Internet Commons Be Saved?

Government investment and the gift economy ethos of academia helped make the Internet the largest, most robust information commons in human history. Now this unparalleled public vehicle for free speech and social communication stands on the threshold of market enclosure. Various industries are seeking to compromise the open, end-to-end architecture of the Internet and replace the public’s information commons with proprietary control. The enclosure of the Internet commons is being achieved through the attempted subversion of open technical standards; unprecedented expansions of intellectual property law at the expense of free information exchange; "techno-locks "that reduce the public domain and fair use rights; and the privatization of Internet governance.

8. The Giveaway of Federal Drug Research and Information Resources.

Until the late 1970s, federally sponsored R&D was considered a public resource that should be liberally shared with the public and other researchers. Since 1980, however,after a concerted campaign by business, Congress and the Executive Branch have reversed this long-standing principle by empowering federal agencies to give away exclusive rights to government research. As a result, the U.S. Government now forfeits billions of dollars in revenue to which taxpayers are entitled, and companies and universities are allowed to charge exorbitant prices for medicines and other products developed through government research. Meanwhile, mountains of valuable reports, databases, congressional documents, and other government information resources remain inaccessible to the public or ridiculously expensive.

9. Enclosing the Cultural Commons.

The past twenty years have seen dramatic new market enclosures of the cultural commons. The fiction of broadcasters serving as conscientious stewards of the public airwaves grew embarrassingly thin by the late 1990s as the "public trustee" model of broadcasting effectively morphed into outright private ownership of the spectrum. Even as wireless phone companies have paid $37 billion at auction for spectrum licenses since 1994, broadcasters succeeded in convincing Congress to give them additional free spectrum space for digital television - licenses valued at as much as $70 billion - and to curb the growth of low-power radio as a local, non-profit alternative. The commercialization of American culture, meanwhile, has intensified with aggressive new marketing in the public schools, intrusive marketing to captive audiences, and aggressive branding campaigns that are converting revered non-commercial institutions - public broadcasting, sports stadiums, the Olympics, Broadway theaters, journalism and more - into crass marketing platforms. American culture is being transformed as it loses its "un-marketed" open spaces, a pervasive privatization that can weaken even the functioning of deliberative democracy itself.

Part III: Protecting the Commons

10. Strategies for Reclaiming the American Commons.

Americans can fight back against the "silent sell-off "of our national heritage by making new use of our most precious tradition of all - our system of self-government. Federal, state, and local governments can and should help bolster a social and ethical commons for market activity; stop the giveaway of taxpayer-owned resources; create stakeholder trusts that pay dividends to all citizens from collectively owned assets; and capture capital gains from public infrastructure; among other initiatives. Meanwhile, individuals and social groups should explore innovations in private law and technology that can keep the commons healthy and intact; create local commons to manage finite resources; expand the institutional vehicles for shared community ownership and cooperatives; and develop new Internet vehicles for sharing and collaboration. Fostering the commons requires not just a policy agenda, ultimately, but a larger cultural vision of community and personal fulfillment. It is time to revive this public-spirited American tradition and promote innovation in the stewardship of public resources.