Tragedy of the Commons

SSRN Abstract: Lemley's "Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding"

Robert Link — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:18:24 -0700

From the text: "...copying information actually multiplies the available resources, not only by making a new physical copy but by spreading the idea and therefore permitting others to use and enjoy it. The result is that rather than a tragedy, an information commons is a “comedy” in which everyone benefits. The notion that information will be depleted by overuse simply ignores basic economics...It is not that free riding won’t occur with information goods; to the contrary, it is ubiquitous. Everyone can use E=mc2, the words of Shakespeare, or the idea of the tragedy of the commons without compensating their creators."" Rather, because the use of those ideas or words does no harm to their creator, it does not create the sort of negative externality with which property theory tells us we should be concerned."

The obvious Disney or Microsoft rejoinder is that, despite such academic speculations, in the current system, those holding IP rights have financial interests which are injured by free riders to the extent that each free rider, minimally, represents a possible financial transaction lost, and that juxtaposing E=mc2 with the financial interests of a best selling playwright is perhaps not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Also from the text: "Nonetheless, intellectual property is a form of government subsidy, designed to influence supply in the market away from the competitive norm..."

This is an appealing perspective, although there may be value in deconstructing just what is meant by "the competitive norm", which seems to presuppose some of the "IP as analogous to real property" perspective against which Lemley argues.

Lemley, Mark A.,Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding. Texas Law Review, Vol. 83, p. 1031, 2005. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=582602 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.582602

Courts and scholars have increasingly assumed that intellectual property is a form of property, and have applied the economic insights of Harold Demsetz and other property theorists to condemn the use of intellectual property by others as “free riding.” In this article, I argue that this represents a fundamental misapplication of the economic theory of property. The economics of property is concerned with internalizing negative externalities – harms that one person’s use of land does to another’s interest to it, as in the familiar tragedy of the commons. But the externalities in intellectual property are positive, not negative, and property theory offers little or no justification for internalizing positive externalities. Indeed, doing so is at odds with the logic and functioning of the market. From this core insight, I proceed to explain why free riding is desirable in intellectual property cases except in limited circumstances where curbing it is necessary to encourage creativity. I explain why economic theory demonstrates that too much protection is just as bad as not enough protection, and therefore why intellectual property law must search for balance, not free riders. Finally, I consider whether we would be better served by another metaphor than the misused notion of intellectual property as a form of tangible property.

The Economist on the Commons

sdohrn — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:56:37 -0700

This week's Economics Focus on The Economist is entitled Commons Sense and talks about the study of the commons and the IASC conference.

Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom are quoted, and the article comes to the conclusion that the study of the "traditional" commons might teach us something about how to handle new commons including many global commons such as the atmosphere or the world's oceans:

The economics of the new commons is still in its infancy. It is too soon to be confident about its hypotheses. But it may yet prove a useful way of thinking about problems, such as managing the internet, intellectual property or international pollution, on which policymakers need all the help they can get.

There is already a small discussion on the Economist website and Jay Walljasper posted a short commentary on OntheCommons.org.

Add your own thoughts to the discussion on OntheCommons, on the Economist website, or here in the comments.

--- cross posted to CAPRi News

IASC CONFERENCE: Creating a political voice for 'commons'

sdohrn — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:04:59 -0700

Next week the 12th Biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Commons (IASC) will be held at the University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England. One of the events that are part of the conference will be a Policy Forum sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) on Tuesday (15 July) afternoon, which CAPRi helped organize on Creating a political voice for 'commons'. One of the questions we will be discussing is what an association like the IASC can do to support advocacy activities for the commons. I would be thrilled to convey any comments and suggestions you might have.

Revisiting Doctorow's "Metacrap"

Robert Link — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:14:16 -0700

Cory Doctorow's acerbic essay, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia came up in conversation today, and I thought that a good excuse to revisit this short gem. Here's a pull quote which goes to the heart of the argument:

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities.

What does this kind of attitude mean for folks interested in cooperation? First and foremost, what Doctorow is talking about is really a "Tragedy of the Commons" problem, in which shared ownership (in this case, shared ownership of meta-data) lends itself to decreased personal sense of responsibility to the overall system. The solution lies in community and governance. To the extant individual meta-data creators are members of a community possessed of sufficient governance as to enforce community standards (e.g., The World Wide Web Consortium then the utopia can be reached. Put differently, the community must create circumstances in which preservation of the shared resources benefits individuals more than irresponsible exploitation of same. The trick, then, is how to create such a community? How to grow it to include all sentient beings?

Chilled by Respect?

Robert Link — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:14:02 -0700

I find it has been almost half a year since I posted anything here. Why should that be? Because I am intimidated by the level of academic rigor in the research summaries and don't want to bring down the wonderful signal:noise. So I produce no noise for fear I have no signal. Yet cooperation must surely include that amount of amount of light banter which is an important part of community building, which in turn, must be of value to cooperation and studies thereof. It brings to mind questions of the validity of the signal/noise distinction in the first place. Perhaps cooperation requires something more nuanced than these two reductive categories.