Commons Conference

Meera Nair (Doctoral Student)
School of Communication, Simon Fraser University
The Commons Conference Presentation, June 2006

On 20 June 2005 the Federal Government of Canada unveiled Bill C-60, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, ostensibly necessary to modernize copyright for the digital age. The discourse that preceded the tabling of this bill showed a clear bias to extend the depth and breadth of copyright, at the expense of the public’s right to access creative endeavour. In this paper I examine the issue of educational licensing of the Internet. A contentious matter, it was removed from Bill C-60 but appears poised* to return. As Canada sits at the policy crossroads, it would be prudent to draw attention to the environment of the proposal at its inception, rather than be critical after implementation.

Creative endeavor implicitly relies on cultural borrowings—as Northrop Frye wrote, “Poetry can only be made out of other poems, novels out of other novels ….” The source of these borrowings is often identified as an intellectual common—the public domain—where past copyrighted work lies available for public use. What lies unseen is the common within ourselves—our individual creative efforts provide fodder to others, while still protected by copyright. Passage to this common is granted by the current, legitimate, copyright exception of fair dealing. Fair dealing ensures that we reciprocate for our own cultural borrowings, and share accordingly.

Educational licensing, tantamount to commodifying passage to the common within, can only introduce unnecessary fiscal strain to education in Canada and will erode the meaning of fair dealing. A meaning which has been recognized for more than two hundred years; in 1802, in Cary v. Kearsley, Lord Ellenborough said, “[A] man may fairly adopt part of the work of another: he may so make use of another’s labours for the promotion of science, and the benefit of the public.”

Stephen Collis

The Commons Conference, April 29, 2006

The blackberry I have in mind is not the catchily-named communications gadget, with its techno-utopian promises of "staying connected" and "mobilizing the workplace" (one is tempted to conjure the spectre of Marx, here, text-messaging Engels). This blackberry is part of capital’s attempt to appropriate the discourse of the commons—to enclose all leisure and extraneous time so that there can be nowhere where one can be "unconnected" to capitalism’s flow of information.

Chris Hurl

Commons Conference Paper, April 30, 2006

Since 1983, public sector workers have catalyzed large scale mobilizations against privatization in British Columbia. As the immediate producers of the public domain, their struggles have extended beyond specific wage demands, galvanizing popular opposition in defense of the "social wage". In this paper I will explore the roots of public sector struggles in the transition from Keynesian economic strategies seeking the alignment of mass production and mass consumption to neoliberal strategies grounded in the decomposition of these spheres through the creation and management of crisis. I will go on to argue that the recent labour struggles in the province should be seen not so much as a defense, but rather a creation of the commons through direct mobilization at the nexus of production and reproduction.

Martha Steigman

Adapted from an article that originally appeared in Alternatives Journal: Canadian Environmental
Ideas and Action, 29:4 (2003). <http://www.alternativesjournal.ca>

In Esgenoopetitj - also known as Burnt Church - a Mi’kmaq village on New Brunswick’s
Miramichi Bay, the Marshall decision was greeted with high hopes and much celebration. With
few options for work in the area, the chance to catch enough lobsters to feed the family and sell
a few on the side was big news. But for Burnt Church First Nation the ruling meant much more
than a modest economic opportunity. It meant that finally Canada recognized their right to live
according to Mi’kmaq culture and traditions, including their right to fish.

The Commons Conference, Uvic
April 30, 2006
Harold Munn
 

Let me begin by acknowledging that the practice of religious faith in the context of the commons is widely perceived to be a contradiction in terms. By definition, so it seems, a faith community could never be genuinely affirming of a religious or theological commons. Faith communities, it is often understood, consist of groups of people gathered around divinely-revealed truths which can broach no discussion of those truths without violating their relationship with the divinity which has supplied the community with the inviolable truths. Such a faith community draws its very essence from its experience that its revelation is unassailable. Like-minded believers congregate together as a congregation, but are unable to affirm the commons in which no group may claim an ultimate authority. Their reception of that divine authority, the abandonment of which constitutes the ultimate apostasy, cannot allow the sanguine acceptance of other claims to truth within the equality which is the essence of the commons. Yet, if we remove the sense of the absolute nature of the divine from the centre of the faith community, it's not clear what would be left that could be called a faith community. It appears that a faith community would by necessity attempt to subvert the commons either by using it as an opportunity to further the agenda of that faith minority, or by attempting to co-opt the commons to become a larger embodiment of that particular faith community.

Commons Conference: April 29, 2006
Mark Willson
Revised -- June 1st

In The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt conceives of the public realm as a space produced by particular forms of citizen interaction. Where citizens are willing to engage in the risk and unpredictability of mutual self-disclosure, she suggests, they benefit from the self-discovery that comes through interaction with previously unknown others, and solidify the bonds between citizens that produce and sustain a space for this public form of interaction. I start with Arendt here for two reasons: 1) she offers a highly substantive account of what public space is, an account which provides some insights into substantially differing understandings of public space from those seen in some contemporary political theory, and 2) her account of public space as constituted by highly participatory and unpredictable acts offers a way of seeing important forms of democratic citizenship practices in city activities that are normally regarded as relatively insignificant forms of political action. These closely related questions, of how we conceive of public space and of how we conceive of its production through the relationships between citizens and their surroundings, are useful to look into, as they impact what types of public spaces are recognized and envisioned, and how they are strived for and produced.

April 28 – 30, 2006 :: University of Victoria, BC

The conference website has been archived at www.forumonpublicdomain.ca/Commons/index.htm

Image at right by Banksy

Some papers and audio/video may be posted here in the future. Check back soon!