Creating a New Internet Bargain to Preserve Fair Use and Protect the Commons

Article by Anna Tumadóttir and Lisa Macpherson: “…This post outlines the forces that are threatening the digital knowledge commons. These include extractive enclosure — the commodification of human knowledge resources as free raw materials by dominant technology actors — and defensive enclosure — restrictions or demands imposed by online rights holders in self-protection against what they perceive as exploitation. We also outline the dynamics that are poisoning the knowledge commons. We show how, combined, these dynamics are creating a new, unsustainable economic bargain for the open web that may benefit large AI model developers and online rights holders while shutting out everybody else. Lastly, we propose a set of principles for developing solutions to address the impact of these forces on the knowledge commons…(More)”.