Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth

'They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.' - Traditional nursery rhyme Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed to own every federal court decision, including Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. A Texas company was recently allowed to calm a patent on basmati rice, a kind of rice grown in India for hundreds of years. The Mining Act of 1872 is still in effect, allowing companies to buy land from the government at USD5 and acre if they pan to mine it. These are resources that belong to al of use, yet they are being given away to companies with anything but the common interest in mind. Where was the public outcry, or the government intervention, when these were happening? The answers are alarming. Private corporations are consuming the resources that the American people collectively own at a staggering rate, and the government is not protecting the commons on our behalf. In Silent Theft , David Bollier exposes the audacious attempts of companies to appropriate medical breakthroughs, public airwaves, outer space, state research, and even the DNA of plants and animals. Amazingly, these abuses often go unnoticed, Bollier argues, because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Publicly funded technological innovations create common wealth (cell phone airwaves, internet addresses, gene sequences) at blinding speed, while an economic atmosphere of deregulation and privatization ensures they will be quickly bought and sold. In an age of market triumphalism, does the notion of the commons have any practical meaning? Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons, a new ethos of commonwealth in the face of a market ethic that knows no bounds.

Business & Money

BOLLIER, DAVID

Economics

Routledge

An impassioned, darkly amusing look at how corporations misuse copyright law to stifle creativity and free speech If you want to make fun of Mickey or Barbie on your Web site, you may be hearing from some corporate lawyers. You should also think twice about calling something ""fair and balanced"" or publicly using Martin Luther King Jr.'s ""I Have a Dream"" speech. It may be illegal. Or it may be entirely legal, but the distinction doesn't matter if you can't afford a lawyer. More and more, corporations are grabbing and asserting rights over every idea and creation in our world, regardless of the law's intent or the public interest. But beyond the humorous absurdity of all this, there lies a darker problem, as David Bollier shows in this important new book. Lawsuits and legal bullying clearly prevent the creation of legitimate new software, new art and music, new literature, new businesses, and worst of all, new scientific and medical research. David Bollier (Amherst, MA) is cofounder of Public Knowledge and Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication. His books include Silent Theft.

Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture

Marketing & Sales

Trade Paper Press

The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking was born of a simple realization: The world we have inherited is no longer working. 
The future of the planet and civilization as we know it are threatened, and the cries heard during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests―“I can’t breathe”―continue to echo. By giving us tools for navigating the transitions ahead, this catalog helps us breathe more deeply. 
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking explains the transformational power of social collaboration by showcasing dozens of pathbreaking projects, books, websites, and activist initiatives. Commoners seek to prioritize people’s needs over market extraction, steward the Earth, relocalize the economy, and build new institutions of empowerment. 
The emerging Commonsverse can be seen in relocalized food systems and community land trusts…in racial empowerment through collective action and mutual aid…and in free and open source software, peer production, and platform cooperatives. 
Commoning is helping communities to managing scarce water supplies, farmers to develop regenerative agriculture, and artists to reclaim control of their creative lives. Ordinary people are becoming more self-reliant through timebanking and collaborative finance, care collectives and gift economies, and alternative local currencies. 
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking is an indispensable guide for understanding many profound social transformations now underway. In 25 thematic sections, The Commoner’s Catalog offers a rare collection of tools for navigating the transitions ahead and building a new world. It offers a portrait of the system-change activism that is creating an economics of sufficiency, a politics of fairness, and a culture of belonging.

The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking: Tools for the Transitions Ahead

Business Culture

Schumacher Center for a New Economics

Discusses companies that successfully and creatively integrated such social issues as child and elder care, the environment, and employee empowerment with profitable business practices

Aiming Higher: 25 Stories of How Companies Prosper by Combining Sound Management and Social Vision

Management & Leadership

Amacom Books

A new world based on fairness, participation, accountability is closer than you thinkif you learn to think like a commoner 
 The biggest "tragedy of the commons" is the misconception that commons are failures-relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the Market and State. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons-an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world. 
 With graceful prose and dozens of fascinating stories, Bollier describes the quiet revolution that is pioneering practical forms of self-governance and production controlled by people themselves. Think Like a Commoner explains how the commons: 
<ul>
<li> Is an exploding field of DIY innovation ranging from Wikipedia and seed-sharing to community forests and collaborative consumption, and beyond </li>
<li> Challenges the standard narrative of market economics by explaining how cooperation generates significant value and human fulfillment </li>
<li> Provides a framework of law and social action that can help us move beyond the pathologies of neoliberal capitalism. </li>
</ul>
 We have a choice: Ignore the commons and suffer the ongoing private plunder of our common wealth. Or Think Like a Commoner and learn how to rebuild our society and reclaim our shared inheritance. This accessible, comprehensive introduction to the commons will surprise and enlighten you, and provoke you to action.

Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons

Reference

New Society Publishers

The power of the commons as a free, fair system of provisioning and governance beyond capitalism, socialism, and other -isms. 
 From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to 'commoning' to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system. 
 Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons ― the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees. 
 Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook. Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes: 
<ul>
<li> Internal dynamics of commoning </li>
<li> How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change </li>
<li> Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies </li>
<li> Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere. </li>
</ul>
 Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence.

Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons

Helfrich, Silke

Global communications systems, digitization, and electronic commerce are combining to change the way people throughout the world will construct businesses and transact commerce. "The Global Advance of Electronic Commerce" examines the implications of these developments on global commerce, economies, and currencies; their threats to nation-states; their impact on societies, communities, and individuals; and the new roles for business and governmental leaders in addressing these developments.

The Global Advance of Electronic Commerce: Reinventing Markets, Management, and National Sovereignty

Engineering & Transportation

Aspen Institute

Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology 1998 Aspen, colo

Communications and Society Program (Aspen Institute)

Engineering

Aspen Inst Human Studies

Rise of Netpolitik: How the Internet Is Changing International Politics And Diplomacy, a Report of the Eleventh Annual Aspen Institute

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Freedom from Harm the Civilizing Influence of Health Safety and Environmental Regulation: The Civilizing Influence of Health, Safety and Environmental Regulation

Science & Math

Claybrook, Joan

Technology

Health Research Group

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Books by BOLLIER, DAVID