The alternative is a communal based commons where intellectual property is accessible to everyone

The autonomists, most notably Negri31 and Virno32, were the first to recognize the centrality of the general intellect to capitalist production and also the first to see this as a kind of commons, a collective wealth which is created by all and shared by all. Marazzi writes that “The common is the entire knowledge, understandings, informa- tion, images, affects and social relations that are strategically subject to the production of goods33”. Similarly, Raunig observes that “The ambivalence of the General Intellect consists in that it has become a reality, to a certain extent, in post-Fordism, yet not simply as control of the many over their working and living conditions, but rather also as a volorization of cooperation and even of thinking.34” The easy availability of communication technology has rapidly led to our current situation, one in which the thoughts, ideas, knowledge and social relations of our society now have the potential to be freely shared by all, creating a rich commons of knowledge. Yet this within this transformation lies a cruel paradox: as more and more human knowledge and activity migrates online, our shared general intellect, less and less of it can be found outside of the digital world. While it is clear that there still exist many spheres of economic and social relations which will always be able to resist being subsumed within the digital, the trend is clear. This signals a seismic shift towards a homogeneous and universal pool of information, one at risk of new forms of restriction and enclosure, akin to other forms of commons found in earlier periods of our history.