Peer2Politics

Copylove is everything we produce and reproduce that can take us closer to "good living", to a sustainable living, and not simply in monetary terms.

Creative Commons allows people to grant others freedom, but with very specific and often mutually exclusive conditions. And that’s only sort of freedom.

In 1996 I started working with Marc Garrett, an artist with a background in street art, bulletin boards and pirate radio in Bristol. Backspace, an early London cybercafe provided the inspiration for loosely organised, free artistic experimentation. It’s hard to imagine now, in the age of web2.0 (where the major web platforms are provided to offer a smooth exchange, in quiet service of commercial interests) the thrill of creating new platforms for art in the early days of the web. We engaged different kinds of people according to a specific artistic intent. Artists conciously crafted particular social relations with their platforms or artwares. [1] These things, connected with cultures of openness and freedom in the world of software and engineering, and undermined the idea of the individual genius artist; allowing us to reconnect with contemporary social and political contexts.[2]

The IASC Commons (International Association for the Study of Commons) has released a series of six short, artfully produced videos, “Commons in Action,” that amount to short advertisements for important commons projects.

In this age of marauding markets, it almost seems quaint to ask, “Who owns culture?”  We know the answer.  When push comes to shove, the owners of copyright, trademarks and patents own everything.  We may think that the music, images and stories of our culture belong to us, but as a matter of law, in the 165+ countries that have signed the Berne Convention, our designated role is....to buy (and not use someone else's "property.")   

Copylove is everything we produce and reproduce that can take us closer to "good living", to a sustainable living, and not simply in monetary terms.

'Patterns of Commoning' describes dozens of lively, innovative commons that are pioneering exciting new forms of production, governance and ways of living.

Expanded concepts of agency allows us to question what or who can be an active participant and allowing for new perspectives on the debate on authorship.

“Only through practices of commoning in space and time that update the commons and strengthen their (counter-)power, especially through anti-capitalist struggles, will different experiences be able to coalesce into a coherent political project, moving those experiences beyond their specific, and sometimes narrow, confines.”

Crowdfunding implies a whole new paradigm of the network and Internet possibilities to create new socioeconomic models. Summarizing  its recent history, it appeared first as sporadic cases (between the nineties and the new century) with calls for financial support from music band fans and promoters of films, and it  began to replicate in a little over two years with more and more platforms. They bring together many ideas, projects and initiatives of third parties, gradually adding small economic amounts given by the maximum possible users, and allow to raise enough money for initiatives to take place.