Special Projects
The Information Commons
Nancy Kranich
Senior Research Fellow
Free Expression Policy Project

WHY WE NEED THE INFORMATION COMMONS

In one of the great ironies of the 21st century, public policy is threatening the advancement of "science and useful arts" rather than encouraging creativity and innovation. According to law professor Yochai Benkler,

Stakeholders from the older economy are using legislation, judicial opinions, and international treaties to retain the old structure. … As economic policy, letting yesterday's winners dictate the terms of tomorrow's economic competition is disastrous. [A]s social policy, missing an opportunity to enrich our freedom and enhance our justice while maintaining or even enhancing our productivity is unforgiveable.1

Stifling free expression and the free flow of ideas results in a controlled society, lacking diversity, equity, and democratic participation in the digital age. Already, the public has experienced a widening gap between those with and without access to communication and information technologies, skyrocketing costs, limited preservation and archiving abilities, restrictions on the ability to lend and dispose of electronic information products, blocking of massive amounts of constitutionally protected speech through Internet filters, and a reduction in the rights to make fair use of copyrighted works.

The concept of the information commons offers a fresh approach to the terms of the public policy debate, emphasizing the fundamental issues critical to our future as a democracy. It provides a useful framework for envisioning the public interest. It gives an opportunity to stake a claim in the future of the public sphere - to give a language from which we can explain how the extraordinary public assets invested in our information infrastructure deliver opportunities for all citizens to participate in our democracy.

The development of the information commons as both a metaphor and a new structure for access in the digital age fills a critical need. The commons elevates the role of individuals as more than just consumers in the marketplace, and shifts the focus to their rights and needs as citizens. Reviving a language of the commons is thus critical to the future of an open, democratic society, rooted in the words of James Madison:

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy ... [A] people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.2

NEXT: SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

1. Yochai Benkler, "The Battle over the Institutional Ecosystem of the Digital Environment," Communications of the ACM 44 (2): 84-90.

2. James Madison, Letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822, in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Published by order of Congress. 4 volumes. Edited by Philip R. Fendall. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1865, III, p. 276.