Commonswashing by information technologies and online platforms, the semantic appropriation of the commons

Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay gave a presentation in July 2019 at the Conference of the International Association on the Study of the Commons (IASC), Lima, Peru of the important concept of 'commons washing' (similar to green washing): claiming openness and the ethics of sharing for-profit endeavors, the appropriation of the concept and the values of the common in the dominant discourse by private actors.

While the enclosure of the commons and commodification is an old process, commonswashing is an additional phenomenon of semantic appropriation seen as an extension of the logic of greenwashing, an enclosure of the mind, a capture of the resources, of the language, but also potentially of the imaginary, and of the legal and policy frameworks in place to protect and sustain the social benefits of the commons.

Such appropriations lead to new forms of “enclosure” of common resources, as private actors come to dominate the governance structures for the commons-based production of a good, or the provision of a service, thereby perverting key features and values of commons-based production, takeover it is one that happens with the private actor pretending to work for the commons, or at least using its semantics.

The presentation was enriched by examples based on the research of the three co-authors, Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, Panos Antoniadis and Félix Tréguer:

• Examples in France of regulations blurring boundaries between social solidarity and start-up statutes, recent illustrations of this process of commodification/financialisation/quantification of traditional approaches to funding "the commons" in France. This process of financialisation and neo-liberal interpretations of commons theory (with Jean Tirole for instance) is made possible by the insistance of commons theorists of shared/detailed rules for governance and accountability, which can lead to very formal governance processes, contractualisation, quantification, etc. Could French new status for corporations of "mission companies" be used by Monsanto?
• Examples of appropriation in the information and digital realm, including: what happens when Community networks meet blockchains, based on Blockchain and Community Networks: friends or foes?, a netCommons blogpost; libraries, Wikipedia, and copyfraud, with memory institutions adding a layer of copyright protection on digitised versions of public domain work (Dulong de Rosnay, 2011); marketing smuggling, with the 2019 Northface hack of Wikipedia where the company swapped out the original Wikipedia photos for its own or in some cases, outright Photoshopped a North Face product into an existing photo of trekking popular tourist destinations.

In an activist scholarship perspective, Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay asked the audience: "how can we protect both the commons and the concept of commons?" Solutions against enclosure, commodification and commonswashing include:

• Public policy recommandations to maintain sustainability.
• Legal defense positive protective status for the commons + sanction to avoid enclosure.
• Legal hacks towards commons private regimes.
• Public/commons partnerships and the partner state.

Slides of the presentation, including these examples of cases, can be downloaded here.

Reference of the communication: Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, Panos Antoniadis and Félix Tréguer, Commonswashing by information technologies and online platforms, the semantic appropriation of the commons, Conference of the International Association on the Study of the Commons (IASC), Lima, Peru, 2 July 2019.

Abstract:

This paper studies commonswashing, the appropriation of the concept of commons by private actors. 

Enclosure of the commons by private actors is an old phenomenon. With information technologies and digital commons, we noticed a tendancy to coopt or claim elements of language of openness and the ethics of sharing to designate for-profit endeavours. Social networks such as Facebook are built on encouraging users to 'share' information with a 'community'.

This semantic appropriation can be seen as an extension of the logic of greenwashing (Kahle, Gurel-Atay, 2014), "a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization's products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly" (greenwashing, Wikipedia, 2018), and a way for the capitalist logic to colonize spaces that still were outside of its ambit.

Commodification of the commons have been studied for hospitality websites (Schöpf, 2015). Our paper proposes to inscribe these trends within larger policy trends, while building on examples from internet connectivity and Community Networks. We argue that such appropriations lead to new forms of “enclosure” of common resources, as private actors come to dominate the governance structures for the commons-based production of a good or the provision of a service, thereby perverting some of the key features and values of commons-based production (for instance through financialization and quantitative management approaches). This takeover it is one that happens with the private actor pretending to work for the commons, or at least using its semantics.

The commons have become recognized and valued across many sectors of society and, as a concept, retains a strong heterogeneity – to the point where politicians and neoliberal economists now also feel talk about ‘the commons’ and claim the values of ‘openness’ for their projects, while maintaining a neoliberal extractive agenda. Why is that co-optation taking place? A working hypothesis is that we face daunting turbulences generated by capitalism itself (climate change, pollution, poverty, etc.), and as new generation of workers and consumers want to find jobs and products with a purpose, referring to the commons can convey the idea that the mainstream economy feels deeply about these issues, and has a solution.

We propose to study this process and to think about how to protect both the commons and the concept of commons. Analytical criteria can help to identify the different shades between commons-based peer production and user-generated content or crowdsourcing online platforms: "ownership of means of production, technical architecture/design, social organization/governance of work patterns, ownership of the peer-produced resource, and value of the output" (Dulong de Rosnay and Musiani, 2016).

• Resistance through political imaginaries and policy solutions protecting the commons include:
• Reform existing law, build legal defenses (recognition of copyfraud status against the enclosure of the copyright public domain; ecocide for future ecological crimes)
• Subvert applicable law through legal hacks (copyleft licensing)
• Lobby to allocate a portion of public fundings for commons (culture subsidies from collective societies to Creative Commons works; European funds for local connectivity for Community Networks.

References

Antoniadis, P., 2019. Blockchain and Community Networks: friends or foes?, netCommons blog

Capra, F; Mattei, U., 2015. The Ecology of Law. Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community, Oakland, Berrett-Koheler.

Chiapello, È. 2017. La financiarisation des politiques publiques. Mondes en développement (178): 23–40.

Dulong de Rosnay, M., Access to digital collections of public domain works: Enclosure of the commons managed by libraries and museums, Proceedings of the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), Hyderabad, India, 10-14 January 2011. Working paper http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00671628

Dulong de Rosnay, M., Musiani, F., 2016. Towards a (De)centralization-Based Typology of Peer Production. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 14.

Kahle, Lynn R.; Gurel-Atay, Eda, eds., 2014. Communicating Sustainability for the Green Economy. M.E. Sharpe.

Papadimitropoulos, V. 2017. The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt? TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 15(2): 565–583.

Schöpf, S., 2015. The Commodification of the Couch: A Dialectical Analysis of Hospitality Exchange Platforms. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 13.