[governance] Re: [IRP] Occupy The Digital Commons

Thu Nov 17 01:14:01 EST 2011

On Thursday 17 November 2011 12:44 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt wrote:
> Fellow New Yorkers [see apology below if you're not],

Sure, Tom, non New Yorkers are fully with the New Yorkers in their all 
their 'occupations' - of the wall street, and of the digital commons. 
:). In fact the slogan 'occupy the digital commons' is very much timely 
vis a vis SOPA. The exact response that SOPA needs. Maybe the groups 
opposing SOPA can organise around this slogan.

But then I am being naive, I dont expect Google, Facebook et al to rally 
behind this slogan. Their opposition to government guarded Internet 
enclosures is largely to the extend that it challenges their privately 
owned Internet enclosures (a big part of the Internet now). But, may be 
the progressive civil society actors can rally behind this slogan of 
'occupy digital commons, becuase digital commons are equally threatened 
by statist and corporatist actors....

Congrats to you and others of your team at the .nyc city commons tld. 
parminder

>
> When Matt Cooperrider suggested a commons approach to governing New 
> York's TLD in 2007, I said "Nice idea, but people aren't ready for 
> this." Over the past four years several developments have led this 
> rusting old head to reconsider Matt's proposition:
>
>     * Elinor Ostrom's <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom>
>       2009 Noble Prize for Economics for "her analysis of economic
>       governance, especially the commons
>       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons>." This transformed a
>       then slow-growth effort to nurture and reclaim the commons into
>       a global movement. There's now even a School of the Commoning
>       <http://www.schoolofcommoning.com/> in London.
>     * The city's decision in early 2009 to support an application for
>       a city-TLD. This relieved us of the burden of developing a
>       structure and securing financing for a TLD application, and
>       provided time to think about a city-TLD's broader implications.
>     * The 2010 closing of city hall's gates to public engagement in
>       imagining our TLD's role in social and economic development and
>       civic affairs. (With ICANN's deadline for filing an application
>       for our TLD fast approaching
>       <http://connectingnyc.org/tick-tock>, we're not sure if that
>       move represents a blunder, cronyism, or something else.)
>     * ICANN's initiating the New TLD Program without providing any
>       guidance to cities. With cities home to more than half the
>       global population, the key generators of economic growth, and
>       the hope for a sustainable planet, it seems their
>       multi-stakeholder governance model demonstrated its limits.
>     * Governor Cuomo's office saying in September that New York's TLD
>       issue "was not a priority."
>     * And most recently, at an October 20 "Tea & TLDs" meeting
>       <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2011/10/18/commons-governance-of-the-nyc-tld/>,
>       David Bollier <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bollier>, a
>       leading thinker about the commons, observed that city-TLDs
>       provided "an open greenfield for new governance structures."
>       Further, he suggested that the Occupy Wall Street movement might
>       provide the opportunity to present city-TLDs as "greenfields" to
>       cities globally. Since the Occupy movement has grasped the
>       essence of the commons in the "Whose streets? Our streets!"
>       mantra, it might be a short hop to urbanites chanting "Whose
>       TLDs? Our TLDs!"
>
> So with the extant governance structures having failed, we've decided 
> to explore the commons approach by bringing the city-TLD opportunity 
> to the Occupy movement.
>
> While we've explored commons governance over the years - see here 
> <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/common-pool-resource> 
> and here 
> <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/category/common-pool-resource%C2%AD%C2%AD%C2%AD%C2%AD/> 
> - this Thursday we're digging deeper into the potential, participating 
> in a "Occupy the Digital Commons" meeting at the Atrium, 60 Wall 
> Street, from 6-8 PM. The meeting was convened by Occupy Wall Street's 
> Campaign for the Commons 
> <http://www.nycga.net/groups/nurturing-the-commons/> working group (an 
> entity we're part of). Here's part of the meeting announcement from 
> the Occupy Wall Street 
> <http://www.nycga.net/events/event/occupying-our-digital-commons/> site:
>
>     /This will be the first face-to face-meeting of this group. We’ll
>     start with a brief review of the commons, including the newest
>     commons, city-TLDs – .boston, .rome, .paris, .london, .mumbai,
>     .nyc, etc. (Like .com and .org but just for these cities.) /
>     /Then we’ll turn our attention to how we can best create an
>     awareness of the foundation role the commons play in society and
>     of the need to nurture them. We’ll look to how the group might fit
>     within Occupy Wall Street structure, if nurturing the commons
>     might be a stated goal of the Occupy movement, and if city-TLDs
>     might provide an engine to advance the cause./
>
> The working group's portfolio is broader than city-TLDs, the commons 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons> itself, but the hope is 
> that a global Occupy movement can bring some youthful heads and energy 
> to the development of city-TLDs as public interest resources, perhaps 
> by serving as greenfields for new governance structures. (For those 
> not familiar with the many features of city-TLDs (greenfields is one 
> of about a dozen), use the links below to our web resources.)
>
> Hope to see you Thursday. If you can't make the meeting, we'll be 
> having a prep meeting Thursday morning at our regular Tea & TLDs 
> Google+ Hangout <https://plus.google.com/u/0/107114190098481725633>, 
> and we'll blog the Occupy meeting ASAP.
>
> NOTE: Thursday promises to be an active day for New York's Occupy 
> <http://occupywallst.org/> movement. While the Atrium's address is 60 
> Wall <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Wall_Street>, there's a separate 
> entrance on Pine Street.
>
> Best,
>
> Tom Lowenhaupt
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> Thomas Lowenhaupt, Founder & Chair
> Connecting.nyc Inc.
> tom at connectingnyc.org <mailto:tom at connectingnyc.org>
> Jackson Hts., NYC 11372
> 718 639 4222
> Blog <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/> - 
> Wiki 
> <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/project-home> - 
> Web <http://www.connectingnyc.org/>
>
> -------------------------------------
> My apologies to those receiving this message with zero interest in the 
> topic. My email list got messed, and while I've tried to pick and 
> choose from the 1,000+ names, there are surely places I've botched. If 
> you'd like to be removed, email me - toml at communisphere.com - and I'll 
> take your name off my .nyc list. I've included those from the ICANN 
> community hoping they can help us think this through. We email about 
> once a month.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> IRP mailing list
> IRP at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
> http://lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org/listinfo.cgi/irp-internetrightsandprinciples.org
>    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20111117/dd1bae76/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t