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Written by: Hilary Goldmann
Published: 06/17/2002 New Report Promotes Digital Information Commons
"Saving the Information Commons: A New Public Interest Agenda in Digital Media" promotes the concept of an "information commons" as a new framework for understanding the public interest in digital media. The report was released by the New America Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing new voices and new ideas to the public discourse and by Public Knowledge, and organization dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant "information commons."
The report argues that the Internet has created a new public commons without the intermediation of markets. User-managed archives and libraries, collaborative web-sites and list-servs, open source software communities and peer-to-per file sharing are all interactive, non-commercial media platforms directly controlled by users. The heaviest public use of the Internet is as
a library rather than as a means for commerce, and therefore the report caution's that "Congress and the courts spend far more time trying to make the world safe for electronic commerce than for preserving the Internet commons." The report recommends strategies to fortify and protect the information commons from privatization and commercialization.
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