Good Commons: Private vs. Public

Ridolfo and Rife describe their idea of the commons as “a place where what is or once was owned can be re-owned by another” (Ridolfo 236). While the place they are describing does sound much more free and less limited than what we have in place, we do have a system like this. The Public Domain is the “place” where works go once their copyright has ended, and those works can be appropriated, used, and remixed by anyone at any time. The commons that they are arguing for, however, seems to go even further than that, pushing for a place where the sampling and remixing of music, film, etc. would not cause as much of a legal tug-of-war as it does in our culture today, and new artists could emerge and collaborate with a level of freedom and creativity that is currently stifled.

The primary purpose of the Public Domain is to separate what is private from what is public. That is, what is still owned by the creator, and what is owned by everyone. Ridolfo and Rife also make an interesting argument about a person’s right to privacy in a public space versus the free speech of other people in that same public space. In Maggie’s case, her picture was taken in a public space, and her right to privacy in that space was challenged by the university’s right to free speech (Ridolfo 231). Inside a commons, though, free speech and public space would not clash—at least not as harshly and not as often, and not within the realm of creative work.

They build much of their argument on Lawrence Lessig’s assertion that free cultures have a lot for others to build on creatively, while unfree or permission-based cultures leave much less to work with (Ridolfo 237). Walt Disney and his company are a perfect example of our culture’s steady transformation to an “unfree” culture. When Disney created all of his beloved classic films, the fairy tales on which he based them were all in the public domain. Now, however, since he has appropriated those stories and remixed them to create his own work, it is incredibly difficult to use those stories without infringing on Disney’s copyright. The irony here is that, if it had been as difficult as it is now to use those stories when Disney was producing his films, we would not have many of the “Disney Classics” that most of us still love today, such as The Little Mermaid, Hercules and The Jungle Book. If we had a commons, these stories would still be free to build upon and remix, and then maybe Disney wouldn’t win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature every single year.

Every time Ridolfo and Rife came back to these points, I was reminded of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I know this was a ways back in the semester, but I think his idea of a Supreme Good can be applied very nicely to Ridolfo and Rife’s idea of a commons, where the commons is itself the Supreme Good, and collaboration, appropriation, remixing, and the public sharing of work are the ends by which that Good is achieved. An artist who is willing to apply the theory of rhetorical velocity—that is, delivering work while looking ahead to how it may be used in the future—is also making a voluntary and, in relation to the commons, virtuous choice that will further the Supreme Good. An artist who keeps his or her work in a bulletproof box, only to be used how he or she deigns, is falling back on Aristotle’s idea of “vice.” That is, they are making the decision with only an inferior end in mind, rather than working for the Good that is a commons culture. 

-Jessica Gonzalez