Felix Stalder on Thu, 28 Aug 2003 18:28:14 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> basic terms in the IP discusssion |
I'm writing a little glossary for a newspaper [1] we are putting together on IP issues. The newspaper will be distributed at WSIS [2]. Better definitions are welcome. Public Good: ------------ Goods whose use is non-rivalrous, i.e. using the good does not deplete it, and non-excludable, i.e. once it is produced people cannot be excluded from using it. The light house at the coast, alerting ships of potential peril, is an example of a public good. Without intellectual property law, particularly copyrights and patents, all digital information would be a public good. Private Property: ----------------- Information owned by a private legal entity (a coporation or a individual person). The owner has exclusive rights to the property as defined by the IP law and can do as s/he pleases with it. Most importantly, the owner can freely set the conditions under which it can be accessed and used by third parties. Public Property: ---------------- Information owned by the state. Within the bounds of the law and what is politically acceptable, the state can do with the information has it sees fit. Example: census data. Public Domain: -------------- Information that has no legal protection, either because copyrights/patents have expired, or because it has been released into the public domain by the owner. Example: the works of William Shakespear. Commons: ------- A pool for information that is managed by a community of users. Acceptable use policies are set by the community. Usually, access to the resource is granted non a non-discriminatory basis and at no or low costs. Example: scientific information, open source software. [1] http://www.world-information.org/wio/wsis [2] http://www.itu.int/wsis/ ----+-------+---------+--- http://felix.openflows.org # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net