An online common with a critical understanding removes systems of power while keeping a sense of non-invasive regulation

Returning to copyright law, we have no delusions about the existing possibilities for restructuring its conceptual focus and terminological layout, and even more the reasoning which it implements down in its very foundations. However, critical understandings and tools, like the idea of an online commons as providing a biopolitical translation of the network society and its internal workings, could be employed for realising alternatives to current regulatory shortcomings.

For example, where copyright laws demand authorisations from content owners, these could be managed through centralised and more relaxed automated systems. Or if not centralised, considering the disliking of neoliberal markets towards centralisations, such operations could be carried out by limited in numbers, recognisable and accessible outlets. For each use they could demand a substantially small fee.

Such solutions do not aim at resolving noted problems in their entirety. However, they promise to increase the online legitimacy capital. Notice and takedown systems and similar solutions incorporate almost autocratic disciplinary mechanisms, which supress and are bound to be resisted or circumvented.

The argument is not about sharing or providing access but about framing. In the truest liberal, biopolitical manner, neither law nor enforcement provide the answer to conflicts over copyright. Corporate content owners need to read the online common carefully and refrain from action, not in the spirit of social responsibility, but of economic rationality: the power of the same online common lies with its capacity to return information productivity.