Wrt to “open data has to be acknowledged to be a partial answer”. Of course. Remember, the whole “how to democratize infrastructures management?” statement was a Tweet. I had to “shock” commoners in real time with < =140 characters, to make them discover the mere existence of the "tool", that's it. But I have written plenty on open data not being a complete answer. See the two "Open Data, Open Society" reports linked from my main writings page at http://mfioretti.com

I fear that many people intuitively feel that that argument “as is” doesn’t make much sense, and so stop listening. What do you think?

Evidently it’s very hard for people to accept that their argument is lacking. It is easier to assume that repetition at higher volume is all that is necessary. This seems endemic to human discourse; I merely want people I agree with to do better.

Same for me, Mike!

Thanks for your comments! In general (it’s almost midnight here, and theoretically the only reason to be at the keyboard now is to finish a blog post so I can rest tomorrow…), I do agree on all the several very perverse effects of the current copyright regime that you describe, up to and including this:

Impact on other fields only strengthens case for abolition

This said, I didn’t write this post because I heard certain things once, in that one single session in Berlin. I wrote it because I hear that same argument all the time, always and only in that same form (that is with nothing else mentioned in the same breath, even when there would be enough time/bandwidth). Which is bad, because with so many excellent, way more robust reasons to explain that copyright should be at least completely rebuilt/reformed, if not downright abolished, it weakens the discourse. Simplification is good and necessary, but why simplify on/to things that can’t stand a second view? I fear that many people intuitively feel that that argument “as is” doesn’t make much sense, and so stop listening. What do you think?

In general, I also have other perplexities against the “mainstream intellectual”, high-ground way to fight copyright and copyright excesses, but that is matter for another post. Stay tuned!

I agree recency is not a great argument against copyright. Indeed that’s a reason I emphasize that knowledge enclosure is much older than copyright; such is simply a “modern” way of enforcing privileges and inequalities in what may be known and communicated. But I think you’ve overstated some points above:

* Recency is pertinent as we can see that much culture and knowledge was created pre-copyright; whatever assumptions one makes about optimal production and relation to protection money, this demolishes the ridiculous but often-assumed assertion that there would be a dearth of production without copyright — and that assertion is even more ridiculous with 7 billion people; see https://works.bepress.com/tom_bell/1/ … recency of more universal suffrage is a facile comparison: consider the desirable outcomes instead — under what rules are fairness and freedom maximized?

* At a conference focused on moving to a commons-based society, which for many seems to approximately mean moving as much provisioning as possible outside of market and state, removing reliance on pecuniary incentives seems like an obvious win. But even outside of this context — because holding out prospect of protection money for inspiration systematically warps society via attacks on free speech, commons infrastructure, and the harmful perverse effects of narrow incentives and lotteries on creative (culture and other) production — a common trope and useful contribution of behavioral economics.

* Art/artists receive prime mention because it/they are used as the first line human shields of those defending market-based censorship. Impact on other fields only strengthens case for abolition — of course this should always be mentioned in same breath, but there is only so much time and bandwidth.

I’ve discovered Friendica recently and yes, it does seem another good component for the bundle I’m suggesting. It is also true that “really critical situations” are not THE first and main focus here.

From what I’ve read and seen in videos of presentations, the freedombox project may have a different focus than what you propose (their priority is security and privacy for individuals in really critical situations) but it is certainly foremost a software project. They just chose the plug computer as a first hardware platform since it’s already available. I’ve heard or read freedombox people say several times that they hope better, cheaper, opener hardware comes along.

I’ve been interested in friendica, whose tagline is ‘the internet is our social network’. Haven’t quite figured out what it’s about, but it seems a similar philosophy to what you propose.