Info-communism v. info-liberalism. Commons and Exclusivity in Information Property Rights
Milton Mueller
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
12:30-1:45 pm on Friday, March 24, 2006
Indiana University Bloomington, Radio-TV Center, Room RTV 226
Co-sponsored with the Telecommunications Department
Talk preceded by an informal gathering with cookies, tea, and coffee, available at 12:15pm.
A reception for the speaker and graduate students will follow the talk.
ABSTRACT
This research focuses on the legal, economic, and political discourse on property rights in information that has developed around the Free/Open Source Software movement, copyright resistance, and advocates of “the commons.” There is a paradox in the free software/free culture movement: It often makes ethical and normative appeals to communalist economic organization while relying on private contracts and copyright law to create informational commons. This paradox creates a tension, if not contradiction, in the associated political movements and advocacy practices. Some elements of the movement base their support for common property on moral or ethical grounds; this segment also tends to adopt or recycle communist symbolism (e.g., Che Guevara T-shirts) and/or attract support from anti-capitalist political constituencies. Another wing of the movement bases its support for non-exclusive property on an individualistic and utilitarian basis and often gains support from business. Rhetorically and politically, it is easier to be an info-communist than an info-liberal because our existing political categories and symbols tend to polarize common and private property. Info-liberals find themselves squeezed between unbounded ethical appeals to “the commons” on the one hand and unbounded support for private property and “the market” on the other. One aspect of my research agenda is to develop an analysis and rhetoric to support an info-liberalism. This talk explores the history, implications and distributional and market effects of different property regimes in communication and information.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Milton Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. He directs the School’s Graduate Program in Telecommunications and Network Management and co-directs the Convergence Center, which focuses on the technical, management and policy problems of converging media. He was one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, a consortium of university scholars working on international Internet policy issues. His research focuses on property rights, institutions and regulation in telecommunication and information industries. His book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace was published by MIT Press (2002). His book Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (MIT Press, 1997) set out a dramatic revision of our understanding of the origins of universal telephone service and the role of interconnection in industry development. For more information, see Dr. Mueller’s web site at http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/.
