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).