Is There an ICT Commons, and Is Tragedy Inevitable?

Abstract

Discusses the relationship of the exploitation of common lands to current issues involving information and communications technology (ICT). Just as we can think of land held in common and the issues that arise from this sort of ownership, we can also think of the open information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure that we loosely refer to as the Internet as a modern-day commons. It is open to all who have an appropriate access device, and can be exploited by all for a range of communications, information, and entertainment purposes. I think we can refer to this as an ICT Commons. A natural follow-on question to the introduction of this new term is whether this new commons, existing in a virtual world of network protocols, data flows, and content storage, is also prey to the types of issues that we saw in the physical commons of land, grass, and cows. Can an ICT Commons be preserved, or will abuse of this commons by many actors who want to use it for their private gain render it unusable? In other words, can we make the ICT Commons sustainable, or will there inevitably be a “Tragedy of the ICT Commons”? What are some of the attributes of a sustainable ICT Commons? I suggest that accessibility, availability, and provenance are three key attributes because they map onto the issues seen with the classical commons dilemma.