David Bollier

A federal judge has ruled that Google’s ambitious attempt to digitize all books, including those for which the copyright holders cannot be found, cannot go forward as planned.  That’s great news.  It will prevent Google from claiming a de facto monopoly over millions of “orphan works” whose copyright holders cannot be found.  The company will not be able to charge exorbitant prices for access to books that ought to be free or at-cost. 

Even better, the rejection of Google’s plan means that the nation’s libraries and research institutions can now entertain the idea of building their own repository of digitized books.  It can be a real commons, and not a “free” proprietary platform that would come with all sorts of strings attached. 

Robert Darnton, the director of the Harvard University Library, makes these points in a terrific oped piece in the NYT today.  After detailing why Google’s book project deserved to be rejected, Darnton asks:  Why not build a digital library better  than Google’s?  Let’s build “a vast collection of resources that can be tapped, free of charge, by anyone, anywhere, at any time,” he writes.

It is rare for a political activist and a poet to cohabit the same body. Rarer still for that strange hybrid to intersect with my life and share my journey.  Which is why I was so privileged to work with my friend Jonathan Rowe – and why I am going to miss him a great deal. 

On Saturday morning Jon went off to the gym, as he often did, and came home not feeling well.  By the evening he had a scorching fever and went to the hospital.  By Sunday morning, he was gone.  He was 65 and leaves behind his wife Mary Jean and young son Josh. 

Jon’s sudden, unexpected death underscores something that he understood well:  our fixation on the big abstractions – politics, economics, wealth – tends to blind us to the fragile and beautiful realities of human existence, whose intrinsic importance cannot be denied....must not be denied.

As someone blessed with a capacious mind and soul, Jon clearly recognized the brutal necessities of politics while honoring the immanent truths of the spiritual.  He also had the clarity of mind to realize that while the two realms may never be reconciled or integrated, neither can they ever be disconnected.  Jon’s life was to wrestle with this koan.

My former colleague at On the Commons, Jay Walljasper, has pulled together a rich array of stories, short essays, profiles and other found gems in a new book, All That We Share:  A Field Guide to the Commons (New Press, 2010).  It’s an especially useful introduction for newcomers to the commons, but it valuable to others as well.  The book explains the basics of what is the commons, why they matter now, and how they provide practical alternatives or complements to existing market systems.  All That We Share covers everything from the enclosures of urban spaces and information to water and nature, as well as a slew of inspiring models for the future.

There’s the story of Mark Lakeman’s work in reviving neighborhood squares in Portland, Oregon, and Jesús León Santos leadership in re-introducing indigenous farming techniques to Mexico, which is helping stop erosion and improve water flows.  There’s the story of North Dakota’s state-owned bank, which has made affordable credit available to its citizens; the Alaska Permanent Fund that channels dividends from oil drilling revenues to every citizen in Alaska; and the remarkable improvements to public transit and schools that Mayor Enrique Peñalosa brought to Bogotá, Colombia.

I confess I’m not the best reviewer of All That We Share because I have several excerpts of my own in it and because Jay’s a friend.  But let the volume speak for itself:  it features such illustrious contributors as Robert Reich, Jeremy Rifkin, Peter Barnes, Peter Linebaugh, Mark Dowie, Winona LaDuke, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Lewis Hyde, among others.  It puts a human face on the dozens of different realms in which commoners are making a difference, and tells their stories in an accessible way.  A wealth of commons-based innovations is reconstructing a battered world.  Read all about it.

A memorable Dilbert cartoon strip features Dogbert as a “creativity consultant” who is directed by his boss to come up with some hard quantitative data.  The boss barks:  “The only way to make decisions is to pull numbers of the air, call them ‘assumptions,’ and calculate the net present value.”  The punchline:  “Of course, you have to use the right discount rate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

That encapsulates the faux-rigor of regulatory decisions for protecting health, safety and the environment.  Ascertaining the dollar value of human life using the most rigorous science possible is a politically useful charade. 

As the New York Times recently reported, the scientifically determined value of a life at the Environmental Protection Agency has gone up from $6.8 million in the Bush II years to $9.1 million at present.  Across town, the FDA decides whether to ban an unsafe drug based on a valuation of $7.9 million per life.  In deciding whether automakers will install new safety features, the Transportation Department figures $6 million.