An Introduction to the Digital Commons: From Common-Pool Resources to Community Governance

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (1) , Hervé Le Crosnier (2)

1 ISCC - Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS
2 Equipe Hultech - Laboratoire GREYC - UMR6072

This article proposes an introductory analysis of digital resources and commons-based peer production online communities with the framework of the common pool-resources. Trying to go beyond the classic economy dichotomy between physical resources scarcity and informational resources reproducibility, the approach allows to focus not only on the nature of the resources, but mostly on the governance by the communities to produce resources which remain available for all to share and build upon, while avoiding risks of pollution, degradation, underuse or enclosure by the market.

Mots clés: enclosures; Internet; digital resources; digital commons; knowledge commons; online communities; commons-based peer production; common-pool resources; enclosures.

Domaines: Droit; Science politique; Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, Hervé Le Crosnier. An Introduction to the Digital Commons: From Common-Pool Resources to Community Governance. Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and genetic Resources Commons, Sep 2012, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. http://biogov.uclouvain.be/iasc/index.php?page=fullpapers. ⟨halshs-00736920⟩