Genius and the soil digital commons digital State and corporate interests have sought to crack talk in terms of protecting the interests of innovative individuals: authors, down on the power to share information digitally. But musicians, and scholars. To give just one could the new technologies point towards a more example, the Motion Picture Association of America, supported by some of the democratic model of creativity, asks JONATHAN GRAY biggest players in the film industry – Disney, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century ho can share what on from the 18th and 19th centuries. Reacting Fox, Universal and Warner Brothers – the internet? There is an against models of literary and artistic claims to pursue ‘commonsense solutions’ increasing awareness of creation that privileged imitation of the that ‘[protect] the rights of all who make debates around protected classics and striving towards perfection something of value with their minds, their material being shared within an established tradition, this period passion and their unique creative vision’. online through high profile court cases and saw a general turn towards the individual This notion of the individual controversies in the news, through things genius who broke previous rules and innovator, the lone pioneer breaking rules like the Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, or the recent invented new ones. Through this new and creating new paradigms, is only one tragic case of Aaron Swartz (see box, right). aesthetic frame, the world was divided side of the romantic story about literary But, stepping back from questions around into visionary and rebellious pioneers and creativity. The other side (perhaps less the law and its implementation in these slavish imitators. useful for those who are keen to expand ‘edge’ cases, what kinds of information Stories like this remain very influential property rights to products of the mind) should we be able to use and share with – from the restless obsession with is that great new works inevitably depend others as a matter of principle? conceptual novelty exhibited by much on and build on shared cultural tradition. Is digital material that can be legally of the contemporary art world, to the The poet Edward Young – whose tract shared with others nothing but the elevation of the ‘disruptive’ entrepreneur on literary composition sold out twice in residue from all the valuable stuff that or the renegade maverick in Silicon Valley Germany in the mid-18th century – said is worthy of protection? Once all of the or Wall Street. Rules are to be broken, that literary genius grew like a new plant good stuff is packaged up and sold from temples smashed, traditions overcome by out of a shared body of culture. The behind ‘clickwrap’ agreements, digital a caste of outstanding individuals leading philosopher and literary critic Johann rights management technologies, iTunes us over the bleeding edge. New voices Gottfried Herder, greatly influenced stores and subscription paywalls, is there need to define themselves against others by Young, said that literary geniuses nothing left but a strange wasteland of – and are haunted by the fear of being such as Shakespeare depended on a free giveaways, taster content, third-rate derivative, by the ‘anxiety of influence’. fertile body of stories, songs, characters amateurism, ads and piracy? Or can we and metaphors, the soil out of which think of a more positive characterisation Creativity and copyright groundbreaking new works could grow – of that body of culture, research and While this picture arose as a cultural a thought that catalysed collections of folk public information, which should be free response to the predominance of aesthetic tales such as those of the Brothers Grimm. for everyone to use, enjoy and benefit classicism, it was happily embraced by When we think, speak, and express from as a matter of principle? publishers, lawyers and theorists who were ourselves we cannot help but use words, The laws, policies and discourses looking for new ways of conceptualising ideas, structures, tropes, conventions, concerning the way we share the fruits of the legal and philosophical foundations operations that come to us from others. our intellectual labour (whether patterns of ‘the copyright’ and what would later We are always already standing on the of pixels, waves, words, chemicals, DNA become known as ‘intellectual property’. It shoulders of giants, and we can but or software instructions) tend to focus still continues to exert significant influence supplement (not escape from or reinvent) on individual innovation, originality, on the way we think about creativity the shared traditions through which we protection and compensation, rather and intellectual labour, as well as on the articulate ourselves. Individual innovation than on collaboration, shared tradition, formation of laws and policies that dictate and invention is predicated upon what we iteration and equitable access. We tend to the way that information moves around inherit and borrow from others – from the talk about these fruits first and foremost in society. languages we speak to the the archives of as commodities for which their creators Large rights holders and lobbyists texts that make up a body of disciplinary or owners are entitled to receive return on who work on their behalf are certainly knowledge. Having access to these their investment. not afraid to use this to their advantage. traditions and bodies of knowledge is an Why? In many ways we live in the Rather than directly addressing the essential precondition for the creation of shadow of certain romantic conceptions economic interests of big rights holders, new works of the mind. of cultural and intellectual innovation industry associations and lobbyists We need a more balanced way

56 red pepper apr | may 2013 Inspired by Aaron

of thinking and talking about how BENJAMIN MAKO HILL and SAMUEL J KLEIN pay information is shared – one that moves beyond a near exclusive focus on tribute to their late friend Aaron Swartz, whose compensation and control. Laws and contribution to opening up culture, research and policies that govern the way information is shared in society need to more information to public access remains an inspiration explicitly recognise and promote the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of n 11 January, Aaron Swartz experience. In this sense, the question of increasing access and enabling reuse. We committed suicide in his New who controls production and access to are beginning to see the emegence of a York apartment several months technology and publications is both deeply broader public conversation around the before he was scheduled to political and critically important. benefits of sharing information, but this go to trial for downloading too Aaron saw the political and social is often focused on marginal cases and many scholarly articles. For more than implications of control over the technical transgression rather than framed in terms a decade, Aaron had been an important infrastructure we use to share and access of a positive conception of a shared body participant in what would eventually be information and he worked relentlessly of information that everyone can access called the ‘free culture’ movement. In some to build more democratic systems of and use via the internet. of this work, we were honoured to be knowledge production, organization and Aaron’s collaborator and friend. sharing. Although the internet is designed Shared digital commons At the core of the free culture as a decentralised system, many of the The battle for a shared commons of digital movement is the observation that those web’s greatest commercial successes – information is being fought on many who control how knowledge is produced, like Google and Facebook – are centrally fronts. Digital copies of works that have reproduced and shared have a deep controlled. Decentralised collections

Sage Ross Sage fallen out of copyright hundreds of years influence on our culture, knowledge, and are harder to access, organise, search, share and integrate. Aaron’s projects tackled hard problems facing decentralised systems, to build democratic technology that would place control over information back in our hands. His work included the creation of widely used technical specifications for data sharing, a Wikipedia predecessor, several startups and a massive, democratically edited bibliographic database. But technical tools were not his greatest work. Aaron’s enthusiasm for finding fundamental solutions to a pervasive problem was infectious. His projects and visions for society were ambitious and focused not only fixing problems but on understanding them deeply and addressing their cause. For example, many in the free culture movement have bemoaned the way that much of our most important knowledge and information commons has been enclosed behind paywalls and put under the control of for-profit firms. Aaron helped to liberate hundreds of thousands of scanned copies of public domain books, millions of public domain US court documents, and an enormous cache of bibliographic metadata. He created,

Aaron Swartz at a Boston Wikipedia meetup in 2009

red pepper apr | may 2013 57 ago continue to be locked up and sold aggregated and coordinated general new projects and continued work in his by companies like Gale Cengage, whose infrastructure for publishing, distributing, memory. Press coverage served to expand subsciption fees were so exorbitant that and analysing a range of datasets. the community inspired by Aaron, and a national agency had to intervene to Over the past few years, Aaron become enlisted many more into these efforts. cut a special deal to enable university more heavily involved in a broad range The effect has been staggering. In researchers in the UK to have access of political activism on issues that went response to the overzealous prosecution to them (if you’re not affiliated with a digital commons digital far beyond technology and information of Aaron’s case, the US Congress is university that has access, you won’t be policy. But even this work was founded in considering legislation to amend the able to read any of these texts on the web). free culture principles and tools. Aaron Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to exempt Many governments around the world still created an organisation that collected large mere violations of terms of service have exclusive contracts to sell critical datasets of public information related to agreements from the felony charges information to private companies, who government, policies and politics to make that Aaron was facing. In protest, many then sell on access to other companies data more widely accessible, searchable academics have published troves of and to the public. This means that in and understandable. Working inside scholarly works and datasets. In cities many countries around the world, you traditional political activist organisations, across the world, programmers and have to pay a third party company for a he directed his knowledge and skills to a activists have organised dozens of subscription if you want to know the text broad range of political projects, including ‘hackathons’ to further projects and tools of the laws that govern you. Big academic anti-censorship, anti-poverty and social to support transparency, accountability and publishers continue to use free labour justice activism. political organising. from university students and employees Between and across these The most exciting examples of to produce and review academic journal communities, Aaron was constantly these projects are ones that incorporate articles, selling subscriptions back to their lending a hand: connecting groups that the positive recklessness with which libraries for extortionate prices. needed to work together, providing server Aaron approached his own work. When We need a more widely accepted space and technical advice to groups that confronted with a problem, most people, positive conception of a body of digital needed it. And he reminded us why this if they think that they might solve the material that everyone is free to access was important to good librarianship and problem at all, look to the simplest and and use in perpetuity – including essential governance, universal education and an most obvious solution. Aaron had the rare information about the world that can informed society. capacity to look for the more fundamental be used to enable better journalism and While he was quiet in crowds, Aaron cause and solution. Frequently, he had better policy-making (from more granular was a natural connector and kept up an the dedication and the talents to find it. and timely carbon emissions data to active correspondence with thousands of His work is inspiring because he resisted information on who is lobbying), access to individuals. He was active in many online playing by the rules; he would play with the research (such supporting the release of communities, including those devoted to rules. We are better because of his work information about clinical trials related to digital archiving, open government, civic and much worse without his continued drugs that our medical services prescribe), engagement, open access and universal contributions. and historical and cultural works that have education. Since his death, many in these Aaron was a friend and an inspiration. entered the public domain. communities and in others have launched We will miss him deeply. There are still substantive debates to be had about the balance between open Aaron, SJ and Mako access and enabling creators to make a living from their work – as well as which policies and models support this balance. And there is plenty of work to be done to ensure that the exploitation of old industries built on the control and sale of wax, tape and dead tree aren’t replaced by new forms of monopoly and control from fast-growing technology corporations. But it is imperative that recognition of open access to certain information as a matter of principle (not just through accident or transgression) becomes an essential part of 21st-century knowledge policy and the more public discourse around it. We need new and better stories about the importance of collaboration and access – about common traditions and building on shared bodies of evidence, reasoning,

Sage Ross reflection and creativity – to complement the much more dominant stories about isolated geniuses and just desserts. n

58 red pepper apr | may 2013