Innovation Law & Policy Workshop: Mario Biagioli

Thursday, September 17, 2015 - 12:30 to 14:00
Location: 
Solarium, Falconer Hall 84 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5 Canada

INNOVATION LAW & POLICY WORKSHOP

presents

Mario Biagioli

University of California, Davis, School of Law

Beyond Pastures: Networked Commons v. Traditional Commons

Thursday, September 17, 2015

12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall

84 Queen’s Park

Abstract: From software and science to collaborative forms of cultural production, the commons of the so-called knowledge economy are typically figured as networks, either material or virtual. No longer associated with groups of people sharing the same workspace, most of these collaborations are figured as changing grids, with interactions following a schedule so variable as to question traditional notions of collaboration. This is in stark contrast with the images of green village pastures or communal fisheries that are typically mobilized to exemplify these kinds of technological commons. More than just a problem of poorly fitting metaphors this indicates a tension within current conceptualizations of the commons — a tendency to conceptualize it as resource rather than as forms of collaborative action. The mobilization of geographically-specific and community-managed pastoral figures of the commons indexes a conservative undercurrent within otherwise progressive intellectual property politics that, I argue, ends up romanticizing communities and their allegedly organic norms and forms of collaboration. In doing so, it unwittingly reifies the logic of property (albeit in the form of communal property) rather than un-think it to make room for post-property concepts better able to capture collaborative knowledge making and knowledge access.

For more Innovation Law & Policy Workshop information, please contact the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at centre.ilp@utoronto.ca.