Talk:ICommons Core Values
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Some thoughts and worries about the values so far expressed:
- Respect the diversity of creativity and innovation by creators around the world
What does this mean and why is it necessary? Respect is a slippery word, and could simply mean "we won't go around trying to shut down organisations who use full copyright", or it could mean "we can't stop PatentTroll Corp from donating to iCommons out of respect for their own approach".
- Promote the highest levels of open access to intellectual products for organisations and companies - especially those with a public mandate
This did read 'intellectual property', which I changed, and I changes 'companies' to 'individuals' because companies are organisations and we need the people in there too.
- Employ open and transparent governance and processes
I left as is for now, but what do people feel about including 'democratic' in there?
- Encourage broad participation in the growth of the intellectual commons - from business to the public sector, and throughout wider civil society
I changed it to have one strong contrast and then emphasise everyone/everything else. Also there's no need to uppercase 'commons', and it needs qualification or clarification because there are many things held in common in this world. Are we going to encourage broad participation in bits of land? :)
- Respect for human rights (both political, economic and social) and for the environment
I added this in because I feel it's fundamental. See this blog post for my rationale.
TomChance 06:21, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
I agree with Tom's suggestion to maintain use of lower-case commons and the addition of a fundamental value, that of respect for human rights, etc.
The APC's vision statement refers to "democratic and egalitarian societies". I can't see any harm in it, although I'm leaning more towards Sorros's concept of an open society in which democracies can flourish I would imagine.
Andrew Garton 02:21, 23 July 2006 (EST)
'Human rights' is good, dependent on who supplies the definition.
For me, 'open' and 'democratic' are synonymous. 'Closed' and 'democratic' simply don't mix. Look around.
I think that the intent with regard to, '* Respect the diversity of creativity and innovation by creators around the world', is clear. The reference implies a cultural definition rather than a sociological one. Perhaps the wording would need to be a little more definitive to clarify?
I made some changes, also, to the iprofiler section. I felt that it had an over emphasis on 'show-casing' and 'credit'-'attribution'.
I know that this is important, but far from the main/usual motivational factors. There are a number of motivational factors that lead to contribution in the open society context - 'credit', in my view and experience is far from the number one ingredient. It tends to vary accoding to the environment, e.g., Wikipedia pivots off the 'peer review' social acceptance factor to a greater extent than a lot of other open projects, whereas within the open coding environment, other motivations come into play - the pleasure of not having a monetary value attached to your work by the other, for example.
I think the changes I've made are more in tune with the direction of the project, whilst leaving motivations to the individuals concerned.
If somebody doesn't like it, they can always change it. That's what wikis are for.
Weaver. 23:23, 23 July 2006
Charitable Object
The charitable object defines the general mission of the organization. All values, goals, strategies and work plans must serve the object's purpose. The iCommons Ltd. charitable object is specified in the Memorandum of Association at [1]. It is "to advance education for the benefit of the public in the wider dissemination of non-commercial sharing of scientific, creative and other intellectual works by the general public."
This language is a compromise worked out with the UK Charity Commission in order for iCommons to receive tax-exempt charitable status.
Our first version did not specify "non-commercial" but the Commission was not inclined to grant us exempt status under that description. They could not see any "charitable" function in simply encouraging people to share their work. Charitable status is granted solely on the basis of the organization's object (which must fall into the Charity Commission's pre-established categories of charitable functions, such as education, medical services, for the poor, etc.), not on its profit/non-profit business model.
We were asked to distinguish our purpose from that of commercial publishing houses who, of course, do not receive any tax exemption and would protest mightily if we got one and they didn't. This is the compromise solution and the Commission is unlikely to want to reconsider it.
Diane Cabell
Open does not equal democratic.
Compare:
Open: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/open
Democratic: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Democratic
Most importantly:
Of, characterized by, or advocating democracy: democratic government; a democratic union
Words matter.
'Synonymous' can mean 'the equivalent of'. It can also mean 'closely associated with'.
Weaver.
Open certainly doesn't equal democratic. My feeling is that the wider iCommons community should be open, but that there needs to be some kind of democratic membership organisation that can elect the board, implement policies such as my proposals on purchasing and fundraising, and make other important decisions that I'd rather not leave to an unelected board. This much is similar to most major free software projects and grassroots community organisations/networks.
On the point about defining commons, there was some healthy debate about this on the cc-icommons mailing list. Here is a summary of some distinctions brought up. We could choose one of these approaches for iCommons, or simply be agnostic and deliberately leave 'the intellectual common open to interpretation.
- Protect the public domain? This would mean seeking to reduce the length, scope, reach and force of copyright (cf Lessig's Free Culture) but otherwise accepting that culture is completely open to private appropriation (a negative common).
- Develop an English-style commons? English commons are privately owned, but commoners have certain use rights against the owner. This is more or less the situation created by Creative Commons, where each person owns their copyright by provides users with more rights than all rights reserved copyright.
- Develop a positive intellectual commons, where culture is in principle available for the use of all commoners, and not owned individually nor collectively. The GNU Project gets close to this, because each programmer assigns their copyright to the GNU Project and so symbolically relinquishes their ownership rights to the common.
Each of those is probably too controversial to include, though :)
TomChance 16:27, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
Something I've wondered about, which seems might be addressed here, is the need for CC to demonstrate some political will. I don't believe it can measure its success merely by volume of licenses discharged... what was it Larry said in Rio? 140 million individual pieces of content were lodged with CC! what would it look like if CC were measured by its politics, its ethics and core values, that it stood for a clear representation of free culture and not, from what I hear, fence-sitting. I think this was part of what Niva Elkin-Koren was driving at in her presentation at the iSummit, a presentation that could have drawn out deeper debate but was quashed by comments such as "we don’t prescribe what freedoms people should have". But CC does prescribe specific freedoms such as the freedom of individual choice (through prioritising creator’s rights to choose how to dispense with their information) and the four ways in which it can happen.
All in all, these value statements are a positive step even if my interpretation of them is just that, my own interpretation.
Agarton 11:53, 7 August 2006 (EDT)
I do not agree with TomChance that "Each of those is probably too controversial to include". Without strong commitment to some basic values this document will be meaningless. I added new first sentence, which for sure needs some rewording, just to start a discussion. I believe we must go deeper in this document. Core Values is something what cannot be an effect of mere compromise full of words which do not carry real ideas. We need to look closely at http://www.debian.org/social_contract - this document make real difference in how their community works. We need to stay tuned for http://freedomdefined.org/Definition development - i think iCommons should contribute to it now and sign it when it's finished. Rekrutacja 17:36, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
I agree that the document must make a "strong commitment to some basic values", but I do specifically worry about tying iCommons to a particular definition or understanding of "free culture". The Freedom Defined web site is a good example -- it's interesting, but I don't agree with all of it and nor will many other iCommoners. Attempting to define cultural and creative freedom in such a way is too simplistic, quite different from providing guidelines for including software in a GNU/Linux distribution (Debian). The Freedom Definition, for example, would commit us to working against several Creative Commons licenses. If you want to do that I suggest you go through other organisations.
The challenge is precisely to formulate a document that makes a "real difference in how [our] community works" without alienating too many people, either by making it too weak or too strong. Where can we draw the line? how broad do we want this organisation to be? are communities that make a tangible difference to creative freedom (e.g. by giving free arts workshops) eligible even if they do nothing related to copyright, patents, trademarks, etc.? should we allow nodes to finance their work by restricting what citizens can do, e.g. non-commercial license clauses? can we just worry about a narrowly-defined copyright agenda, and ignore other issues such as exploited workers making our merchandise, or China's internet firewall? These are all difficult questions that we need to tackle, and that won't be answered by having a few well meaning geeks participate in the Freedom Defined project, nor I suspect by discussing the issues in these wiki pages.
What we really need are a range of proposals, detailing what it would mean if iCommons adopted the Freedom Definition, or (referring to Agarton's comment) if iCommons got off the fence and demonstrated a clear ethical & political will. Then we could seriously debate the direction of iCommons. Perhaps these wiki pages will at least provide a decent starting point for that debate.
TomChance 18:11, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
Having read the 'core values' proposal, my main comment is that it is unclear, whose values they are. In the case of Debian, it is the producers providing a contract for the community. In the case of ICANN, it is a formal organisation with members, etc. In our case, it is not clear to me, whether these are the values of the icommons project, which it offers as a contract to the wider community: you can expect this and this from us. Or whether these are the values that anyone inside the community will have to meet. This of course ties to a more general confusion that I have. Jon Philips wrote on the iCommons list: "iCommons supports the Free Culture Community or even simpler iCommons is Free Culture Community". I think this is not an equation that should be made lightly, as these are two different entities that not necessarily have to equate.
Each of the two "scenarios" requires a different core values document. For example, if every "partner" institution is to meet these values, what does "Respect for human rights (both political, economic and social) and for the environment" translate to in practice? Does the institution have to recycle? Do they have to use 100% free software? and so on...
Personally, I would streamline this list to include only quite specific, almost practical "rules" and "goals" (though we can call them values) - and not use "grand" statements unless they can be operationalised.
Tarkowski 18:18, 22 August 2006
Tarkowski, so far as I am concerned these should be the core values that the organisation iCommons (with its staff, office space, budgets, etc.) adheres to, and that it offers to the wider community. Nodes may choose to take up these values themselves - that would be great - but it would be too unwieldy for iCommons to be vetting every project beyond really terrible misbehaviour.
For iCommons, it would then require that they make a serious effort to (picking up on your example) respect human rights and the environment through (to pick some obvious examples) implementing policies on ethical purchasing and fundraising. So the "grand statements" are "operationalised" in specific policies.
Both provide communities and individuals with a social contract, a good indication of the kind of project they might get involved with. I wouldn't want to be involved with an organisation that didn't include a respect for human rights as a core value, and I would push hard for that value to be reflected in good policies on purchasing and fundraising, for example.
TomChance 16:38, 22 August 2006 (EDT)
To complement our commitment to diversity of creativity and innovation around the world, we should also consider including a section where we state our commitment to supporting a more equitable global social development based on access to technology, knowledge, science. This should underline our support for the Development Agenda and a better balance between opportunities for development based access and IP protection regimes, but maybe also a more general view that the right of access has in our day and age is key to social development.
Thus, I've included the following statement: "Promote and support efforts to achieve a more equitable global development based on access to technology, knowledge, science and culture." It should though probably be better formulated.
Tomislavmedak 11:08, 13 November 2006 (EST)
