Securing the Internet Commons

And the ideas, the creative commons licenses.

How many people have heard of creative commons?

This is an attack on the global commons.

Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid, 2005 S.C.C.

Now, this explains the right wing nonprofit Creative Commons.

This is Mashpee Commons, the oldest retrofit that we've found.

It is, in theory, the global commons, belonging to us all.

So, we've built this idea of a commons. People are using it.

Behind that is the legal code, so if you want to very carefully construct it, and creative commons is taking off over 43 million things out there, licensed with a creative commons license.

While acknowledging that issues surrounding compensation for losses to global commons were unique and complex and required separate treatment, some delegations would have preferred the application of the draft principles to the global commons.

The other major narrative of social dilemmas is the tragedy of the commons.

Trafficking moves largely at sea but in other parts of the global commons.

Because we're saying that anybody can contribute things to this commons. Anybody can contribute anything.

The respondent, Satnam Vaid, was the driver of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

In Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid, the Supreme Court considered whether the Canadian Human Rights Act was applicable, because of the Constitution, by reason of a parliamentary privilege of the House of Commons and its members on questions of employment.

So this terrorism concern is also part of the global commons, and what we must address.

Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, United Kingdom House of Commons, 14 July 2004.

So let me talk a little bit about why we need to do that, because our global commons is under attack in a variety of ways, and none of the sources of threat to the global commons will be solved by building walls.

UNIDO puts special emphasis on helping developing countries meet the environmental challenges that threaten the global commons.

I'm going to talk briefly about two of them the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons.

So, you know, we have open source software, we have Creative Commons and other kinds of Copyleft solutions.

Elinor Ostrom, the latest Nobel laureate of economics, clearly shows empirically across the world that we can govern the commons if we invest in trust, local, action based partnerships and cross scale institutional innovations, where local actors, together, can deal with the global commons at a large scale.

So it brings me to my main take home message, which is we can avert a tragedy of the commons.

But she also found many instances in which people escaped the prisoner's dilemma in fact, the tragedy of the commons is a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma.

This kind of trafficking, in narcotics, in humans, in weapons, God forbid, in weapons of mass destruction, is part of the threat to the global commons.

She looked at thousands of cases of humans sharing watersheds, forestry resources, fisheries, and discovered that yes, in case after case, humans destroyed the commons that they depended on.

Now, Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, in 1990 asked the interesting question that any good scientist should ask, which is is it really true that humans will always despoil commons?

United Kingdom House of Commons, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors , 14 July 2004, para. 129, at http download.ukonline.gov.uk butler report.pdf.

With national security and prosperity now dependent on the safekeeping of cyberspace, cybercrime must be effectively countered as an international priority. If not, cyberspace will become the new global commons battlefield.

To do so would actually help ourselves. For, even with strategic competitors like China, we now live in a global commons in which we share air, water, manufactured goods, and even food.

Another thing I worry about in the global commons is the threat posed by trafficking, by the movement of narcotics, opium, here coming out of Afghanistan through Europe over to the United States.

This is those wonderful days of the Battle of Britain in 1940, when a Messerschmitt ME109 bursts into the House of Commons and buzzes around, just to piss off Churchill, who's down there somewhere.

UNCTAD participated in the first African Conference on the Digital Commons, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town (South Africa, January 2004), in the context of its work on free and open source software (FOSS).

Humanity needs to learn new ways to produce and use low carbon energy, grow food sustainably, build livable cities, and manage the global commons of oceans, biodiversity, and the atmosphere. But time is running very short.

Very briefly, let's look at some businesses. IBM, as you know, HP, Sun some of the most fierce competitors in the IT world are open sourcing their software, are providing portfolios of patents for the commons.

The new enclosures of the genetic commons or of body tissue threaten to extend the objectification and commodification of the body to both sexes. Everyone has a female body now, or, more properly, a feminized body.

Actually, it's not a right wing nonprofit, but of course let me just tie it here the Creative Commons, which is offering authors this simple way to mark their content with the freedoms they intended to carry.

But it is not just world markets that have enmeshed China in a new commons. Issues such as nuclear proliferation and the global environment and especially climate change have also snuck up on China s leaders (and everyone else).

The world needs a thriving, cohesive EU to advance democratic principles, facilitate conflict resolution, protect the global commons, promote peace, and build trust across borders. The alternative already gaining traction is the resurgence of naked power politics and dangerous xenophobia.

In a notable breakthrough in 1997, the British House of Commons decided to serve only fair trade coffee. By the end of 2007, more than 600 producers organizations, representing 1.4 million farmers in 58 countries, were selling fair trade products.

NEW DELHI The world now accepts that protecting our atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere the global commons is the responsibility of all countries. The same norm must apply to cyberspace, which is critical to our everyday life, economic well being, and security.

World Resources Institute President Andrew Steer notes that more than 50 developing countries are now implementing costly policies to reduce climate change. From the perspective of national interest, that makes no sense at all, given the global commons nature of the problem.

In areas beyond national jurisdiction, collective action is essential for effective conservation and management, not only to support species and habitat recovery in more heavily impacted zones, but also to maintain the biodiversity of the international commons for the benefit of all.

The presentation of the report of the Expert Meeting was complemented by a presentation by a representative of the Creative Commons (CC) NGO. It was explained that notions similar to those of FOSS could be applied to the object of ICT actual content.