Welcome to the digital commons | openDemocracy

"openDemocracy calls itself a digital commons - but what does that really mean - and is it a sustainable model in a digital landscape dominated by tech giants? Dan Hind starts a conversation on digital commons and what they offer the future of the internet ... If you click on the ‘About’ link at the top of this page you will see that openDemocracy describes itself as a ‘digital commons’, as ‘a shared resource, resisting both the web’s permissiveness as well as corporate efforts to enclose it’. The site is not a magazine, nor a commodity. It is ‘a public service on the web’ that aims to provide ‘a platform for exchange’. This definition serves as one starting point for the debate we are hosting here over the next few months.  Defining oneself as a digital commons raises important questions about openDemocracy. How does a digital commons differ from a magazine or a commodity? What is it about the site that qualifies it as a commons? A platform for exchange will be – must be – noisily plural but it cannot be a Babel of voices talking at cross purposes. How do we reconcile the need for maintenance and oversight with the site’s existence as a shared resource? And, given the need for ongoing care and attention, how does openDemocracy pay its bills?  The definition also raises questions about the context in which openDemocracy operates. What do we mean by ‘the commons’? What work is the word already doing in debates about the internet, and, more widely, in debates about the future of political economy? The idea of the commons has become increasingly important over the last two decades. As it has moved from comparative obscurity it is right that we should examine it more closely, trace its histories, and distinguish between different uses of the word. This is the other starting point for the discussion this summer ..."