From Common Sense to Commons Sense - A Copyright Exception for Monetizing File-Sharing

Abstract:

Common sense tells us that road users need rules, signs and controls, lest they cause accidents. City planner Hans Mondermann, counter-intuitively, did away with all of them and created a "shared space" where participants negotiate their movements ad hoc, at eye level. Common sense tells us a number of things about money and creditors that banker Muhammad Yunus turned on its head. Common sense tells us that software is a high-investment, high-profit good that needs to be protected. Richard Stallman started to give his software away. All three were called crazy in their times. All changed the world and the way we think about it.

If shared space, shared money and shared code work so well why not shared culture? The current copyright regime is built on Mark Stefik's dictum "It's unfortunate but people are dishonest." On the contrary, people prove time and again their willingness to pay creators, if, that is, they are not treated as thieves but as partners. In many forums a new social contract between authors and audiences is being negotiated. It is made up of many elements, including a lump-sum-payed permission to file-sharing. "If you tread people as idiots, they will start behaving as idiots." (Mondermann) Conversely, if we start treating each other as partners in an arrangement where we collectively provide creators whose works we enjoy and share with each other with decent working and living conditions to create them, we will behave accordingly. What is needed is a shift from received common sense to commons sense.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.