Re: IANG license translation draft

On 9/14/07, Patrick Godeau < pogo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Dmytri and all,

Dmytri Kleiner a écrit :
> On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 23:41:56 +0200, Patrick Godeau <pogo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>> However, I believe that after we sort
>> out the misunderstandings and unclear parts of IANG, we'll realize that
>> there's not so much work to do.
>>
>
> I agree, I think we have a very compatible approach.
>

I think we have at least the same goal, to extend the commons from
immaterial creation to material economy, and to preserve these commons
from appropriation. However our approaches may differ on some aspects.
There is surely room for improvement in IANG and I hope we can make a
better IANG 2.0, but for changing important rules, you may need to
convince me first, of course ;-) Interestingly, when I started to think
about this project (around 2000) my approach was much similar to yours.
But as the project matured, I've come to think that the economy of
copyleft should not be managed only by producers, but also by consumers.
I'll try to explain why I think it's a better approach in the sense of
freedom, equity, solidarity, in short, copyleft.

> In venture communism I promote the concept that all who apply their labour
> to property are entitled to be among the mutual owners of that property,
> perhaps something like that can be a clause.
>

This is a fair remark, I should probably add something like this in IANG
2.0. However the most important thing is not who owns, but who decides,
and the license already states that decisions about the work belong to
all who contribute to this work. Also, the material work is not the
creative work, and I don't see why for example the printing press
operator should have a say in the story of the book, except if s-he is
admitted in the creative project. But I agree that this operator should
have a say in the economic project.

>
>> The rationale behind these definitions is that the economy of public
>> works should be public, and managed by all those who contribute to it,
>> including customers through their purchases and subscriptions. These are
>> not exchanges in the sense of market economy but rather contributions to
>> a gift economy. Of course, the IANG items will be sold on the market,
>> but seller and buyers will not conflict but share the same economic
>> entity, like in mutual societies, cooperatives, associations.
>>
>
> In my mind the distinct characteristic of a Maussian "Gift Economy" is that
> value is placed on relationships, and not on individual transactions.
>
> [...]
>
> Further, as the information covered by a peer-production license is
> common-stock, there would be no direct purchases or subscriptions, rather
> the commons is a common input to production of goods and services.
>
> As such, it is import that we insist that the exchange value captured by
> deriving goods and services from common-stock is captured by it's "work
> contributors" and not owners of rent-capturing property.

My view is that exchange value should not be captured at all, by no one,
not even by work contributors. One could call this "ecopyleft", which is
to economy what copyleft is to information, a guarantee against
privatization. This is why I wrote about "gift" economy, because
everyone can give to the commons, but no one can take from. I didn't
intend to refer to Mauss or potlatch, it would be more like an ordinary
association, where associates contribute what they will, without a
necessary reciprocation.

>
> So, while a recording artist can not capture exchange value directly from a
> recording, a night club or radio station owner can. The trick is how to
> make sure this exchange value is equitably shared among all the work
> contributors, and not appropriated by property owners.
>
> This is why the possibility of "economic contributors" is extremely
> limited, basically outright donors and perhaps interest free lenders can
> really be considered "contributors," and even these two are problematic,
> because the donation and/or interest-free loan must benefit the commons as
> a whole, not simply the "original creator," in order to directly be a
> contribution to the commons.
>

Your "commons as a whole" is only the producers, while for me the
commons should include producers and consumers, the latter being
presumably more numerous than the former, thereby making sure that
exchange value is not inequitably shared or appropriated.

Also note that a private investor contributing to a IANG economic
project, as a legal entity, has only one vote, so a multinational
company equals a single customer. And finally, as stated in article 6.2,
there is no obligation to admit a contributor.

> I still do not see customers qua customers as contributors, Workers are
> already covered under "work contributors" so "economic contributors," imo,
> should be limited to donors and possibly interest-free lenders.
>

Customers are however the most important economic contributors, because
without them, the economic project couldn't exist (except if the
producers only produce for themselves, which would be of limited public
interest).

Also, one should note that the Creative Project is different from the
Economic Project. Participation rules are designed so that contributors
should decide about what they contribute. So creative contributors
decide about artistic orientations, while economic contributors decide
about prices and payments.

>
>> On the contrary, opening economic participation to the public will make
>> it really public and driven by public interest, since if the creation
>> has some use value, users will form a majority, even if probably only a
>> minority of them desire to participate.
>>
>
> My view is that this public interest will in most case be manifested in
> work contributions by individuals and groups joining the project and
> contributing to it directly.
>

This is not necessarily true. For example, free software hackers have an
interest in technical skills and programming tricks, that is opposed to
most users interest in simplicity. Even if some recent Linux
distributions have become more or less useable, there is still a strong
resistance towards user friendliness.

>
>> The fact that producers own their working tools does not change anything
>> regarding the relation with public.
>>
>
> The "public" is nothing more that the extended community of producers.
>

A user is rarely a producer in the sense of creation. I doubt that all
the listeners of Jamendo compose music, or that the millions of Firefox
users all contribute code. (In fact there are about 1000 developers for
100 millions users, a rather low ratio.) But no one knows better than
the public what are the needs, what should be developed, what
investments would be necessary, etc.

>
>
>> Cooperatives (I happen to work in
>> one) operate in a market economy, their interest are in conflict with
>> customers about price, and they compete against other companies, even
>> other cooperatives.
>>
>
> They also share public goods, and the amount of common-property the employ
> in there production could be greatly increased. I do not think that
> competition and markets cause problems so much as private property and
> economic rent.
>

I think that the market, which values competition and profit, is by
nature opposed to copyleft, which values cooperation and giving. If we
want to transpose copyleft into economy, I think we should be careful
with the market. As you noticed, reproducible information cannot have
direct exchange value of its own, so in this game, authors will always lose.

>
>> Purchasing a work that is available for free is already a committed act.
>> We should have a model that encourages this act, not restrain it.
>>
>
> Sure, it is not donations that I think we should restrain but rather the
> ability of property owners to extract rent.
>
>
>
>> Fortunately, this is not possible for a public to capture surplus value
>> from themselves. This is why the public should not only have financial
>> information, but also drive the economy of copyleft.
>>
>
> It is possible, as in my example with a radio station or a night club being
> able to capture surplus value from a recording, even without having any
> copyright on it.
>

Whether the recording is ecopyleft or copyright, if authors want to
distribute it to private broadcasters, they must deal with them,
possibly through the collection society. If this society is managed by
both music producers and consumers, the broadcasters will be more
obligated to stick to their role of intermediaries, and not abuse their
position. On the contrary, if producers handle collecting on their own,
they will be faced at the same time with the broadcasters, with their
public (market relation of obligatory reciprocation), and with
themselves (conflict for distribution of income).

>
> I think one key topic I would like to emphasize is that the "public" is a
> collection of producers, and that in a property-based society, a portion of
> the total goods produced by these producers is appropriated by
> non-producing property owners, and that this reduces the amount of wealth
> the producers can share and exchange with each other.
>

For me, the public is mostly comprised of users, who rarely contributes
to the production. For example, the majority of people who have heard
about free software think it's just software that is free (as in free
beer). However, some contribute, either to copyleft creations, or to
their financing (the latest Wikipedia donation campaign raised $1
million in 2 months). The question is, how to make sure that these
contributions are not appropriated. The IANG approach is somehow to
apply the copyleft principle to economy. That is to say, economic
contributions can be given, but not taken away. To guarantee this, all
economic contributors should not only have access to accounting, but
also have control of it, just like free software contributors can not
only access the source code, but also change it. So if a capitalist
company wants to sell ecopyleft works, it must let its customers control
its capital.

I think that a big problem with the economy in general is that consumers
have no control on it. Multinational companies rule the roost and reign
over customers. For example, Stallman was motivated to create the GNU
project because a printer manufacturer refused to give the source code
of a driver. 25 years later, free drivers may exist for some printers,
but the situation has not really improved, free software developers are
often obliged to reverse-engineer printer protocols, and customers are
forced to buy printers that break down just after the guarantee and
can't be repaired, ink cartridges more expensive than the printer, etc.

Even if the knowledge is copylefted, it is of no help for users as long
as means of production are controlled by producers seeking profit.
Suppose for example that the patent system is abolished and all
pharmaceutical companies are under workers' control. What would happen?
Since we're in a market economy, these compagnies will probably continue
to invest in the most profitable medicine at the expense of billions of
people having unprofitable diseases, will continue to spend twice more
on advertising than on research, etc.

When working on a license, I think we should always keep in mind the
copyleft values of freedom and solidarity. If an economic project is
ruled by producers, there won't be freedom for users to determine its
orientation, their only option being to choose a competitor project on
the market. The solidarity between producers and consumers is a central
value of copyleft, and a raison d'être of IANG is to defend this
solidarity also on the economic level. This kind of partnership between
consumers and producers is also emerging nowadays for example through
fair trade, the Seikatsu cooperatives, etc. But I think that creative
works are special because the public is more inclined to donate to
artists. Involvement of the public even starts to happen in movie
production, as for example with korean netizen funds or Blender open
movies. If a 100% open economy will be harder to reach than 100% open
source (even open source software sometimes uses closed source drivers)
and some intermediaries may be necessary, I think it's important that
users have a control, in conjunction with producers, so that they can
counteract these intermediaries, and make progress towards a more free
society.

Regards :-)

--
Patrick
http://iang.info/