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Over the last decade or more, there has been a detectable and growing dissatisfaction among students with the "status quo" in the way the society works. Students have witnessed terrorism, long-term war, a "great recession," the "Occupy" movement, effects of climate change and worse projections to come, and most recently, a global pandemic with a great impact on the economy. Many students are looking for models of hope and alternatives to the status quo on how society at local, regional and global levels might operate to collectively address problems. In this course, we will review historical and contemporary commons cases. [Note: Some of you might ask: "What exactly are commons"? This will be a question we will examine throughout the course, but I include three different definitions or descriptions in the box on the next page.] We will explore how these forms of social organization might be used to change the way we humans interact. Central to these discussions will be learning methods for studying commons governance, called "Institutional Analysis," and a focal activity in the course will be a project where we study the governance and management of one or more active commons cases. Our overall goal is to study and investigate both successful and unsuccessful cases, and get inspired.

Abstract
Conceptualizing privacy as information flow rules-in-use constructed within a commons governance arrangement, we adapt the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to study the formal and informal governance of information flows. We incorporate Helen Nissenbaum's "privacy as contextual integrity" approach, defining privacy in terms of contextually appropriate flows of personal information. While Nissenbaum's framework treats contextual norms as largely exogenous and emphasizes their normative valence, the GKC framework provides a systematic method to excavate personal information rules-in-use that actually apply in specific situations and interrogate governance mechanisms that shape rules-in-use. The GKC framework thus directs attention beyond information transmission principles to a broader spectrum of rules-in-use for personal information and supports consideration of procedural legitimacy. After discussing how the GKC framework can enrich privacy research, we explore empirical evidence for contextual integrity as governance within the GKC framework through meta-analysis of previous knowledge commons case studies, revealing three governance patterns within the observed rules-in-use for personal information flow. Though constrained by existing literature, our theoretical analysis provides strong justification for a new research agenda using the GKC framework to explore privacy as governance. We conclude by discussing potential implications for policy-makers of viewing privacy through an information governance lens.

AbstractConceptualizing privacy as information flow rules-in-use constructed within a commons governance arrangement, we adapt the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to study the formal and informal governance of information flows. We incorporate Helen Nissenbaum's "privacy as contextual integrity" approach, defining privacy in terms of contextually appropriate flows of personal information. While Nissenbaum's framework treats contextual norms as largely exogenous and emphasizes their normative valence, the GKC framework provides a systematic method to excavate personal information rules-in-use that actually apply in specific situations and interrogate governance mechanisms that shape rules-in-use. The GKC framework thus directs attention beyond information transmission principles to a broader spectrum of rules-in-use for personal information and supports consideration of procedural legitimacy. After discussing how the GKC framework can enrich privacy research, we explore empirical evidence for contextual integrity as governance within the GKC framework through meta-analysis of previous knowledge commons case studies, revealing three governance patterns within the observed rules-in-use for personal information flow. Though constrained by existing literature, our theoretical analysis provides strong justification for a new research agenda using the GKC framework to explore privacy as governance. We conclude by discussing potential implications for policy-makers of viewing privacy through an information governance lens.

Personal information as a knowledge commons resources / Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo, Brett Frischmann and Katherine J. Strandburg -- How private individuals maintain privacy and govern their own health data cooperative : MIDATA in Switzerland / Felix Gille and Effy Vayena -- Pooling mental health data with Chatbots Michael Mattioli -- Privacy in practice : a socio-technical integration research (STIR) study of rules-in-use within institutional research / Kyle M. L. Jones and Chase McCoy -- Public Facebook groups for political activism / Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo and Katherine J. Strandburg -- The republic of letters and the origins of scientific knowledge commons knowledge commons / Michael J. Madison -- Privacy and knowledge production across contexts / Brett Frischmann, Katherine Haenschen and Ari Ezra Waldman -- Governing the Internet of everything / Scott J. Shackelford -- Contextual integrity as a gauge for governing knowledge commons / Yan Shvartzshnaider, Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo and Noah Apthorpe -- Designing for the privacy commons / Darakhshan J. Mir.

Knowledge commons facilitate voluntary private interactions in markets and societies. These shared pools of knowledge consist of intellectual and legal infrastructures that both enable and constrain private initiatives. This volume brings together theoretical and empirical approaches that develop and apply the Governing Knowledge Commons framework to the evolution of various kinds of shared knowledge structures that underpin exchanges of goods, services, and ideas. Chapters offer vivid and illuminating case studies that illustrate this conceptual framework. How did pooling scientific knowledge enable the Industrial Revolution? How do social networks underpin the credit system enabling the Agra footwear market? How did the market category Scotch whisky emerge and who has access to it? What is the potential of blockchain-ledgers as shared knowledge repositories? This volume demonstrates the importance of shared knowledge in modern society.

The rise of 'smart' - or technologically advanced - cities has been well documented, while governance of such technology has remained unresolved. Integrating surveillance, AI, automation, and smart tech within basic infrastructure as well as public and private services and spaces raises a complex set of ethical, economic, political, social, and technological questions. The Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework provides a descriptive lens through which to structure case studies examining smart tech deployment and commons governance in different cities. This volume deepens our understanding of community governance institutions, the social dilemmas communities face, and the dynamic relationships between data, technology, and human lives. For students, professors, and practitioners of law and policy dealing with a wide variety of planning, design, and regulatory issues relating to cities, these case studies illustrate options to develop best practice. Available through Open Access, the volume provides detailed guidance for communities deploying smart tech.

Researchers interested in blockchains are increasingly attuned to questions of governance, including how blockchains relate to government, the ways blockchains are governed, and ways blockchains can improve prospects for successful self-governance. Our paper joins this research by exploring the implications of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to analyze governance of blockchains. Our novel contributions are making the case that blockchain networks represent knowledge commons governance, in the sense that they rely on collectively-managed technologies to pool and manage distributed information, illustrating the usefulness and novelty of the GCK methodology with an empirical case study of the evolution of Bitcoin, and laying the foundation for a research program using the GKC approach.

Humanitarians and bureaucrats who are mandated to work together in complex emergencies face many challenges, especially in settings marked by conflict and displacement. High on the list of challenges are barriers to sharing knowledge freely. These barriers include (self)censorship, contested framings and priorities, deliberate ICT black-outs, and the withholding (or not collecting) of mission-critical information. These barriers exacerbate the gaps in knowledge sharing that occur as a result of a lack of time or capacity. This article conceptualises crisis knowledge as a 'commons': a shared resource that is subject to social dilemmas. The enclosure of the knowledge commons—brought about by the barriers outlined above—hampers daily operations as well as efforts to improve the situation in the long term. Trust is key to effective commons governance, as actors need to sacrifice personal benefits (e.g., control over information) for a collective good (e.g., shared learning). Knowledge and trust are deeply interlinked, as shared ways of knowing (alignment) foster trust, and trust fosters the sharing of knowledge. Given the hierarchical nature of humanitarian relationships, this article explores how power and networks shape this dynamic. It focuses on the humanitarian response to the 2018 Guji-Gedeo displacement crisis in the south of Ethiopia. It presents a qualitative analysis of how the governance arrangements that marked this response shaped emergency operations centres' ability to manage the local knowledge commons effectively. It shows how in Guji-Gedeo, these arrangements resulted in a clustering of trust that strengthened barriers to knowledge sharing, resulting in a partial enclosure of the knowledge commons.

Researchers interested in blockchains are increasingly attuned to questions of governance, including how blockchains relate to government, the ways blockchains are governed, and ways blockchains can improve prospects for successful self-governance. Our paper joins this research by exploring the implications of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to analyze governance of blockchains. Our novel contributions are making the case that blockchain networks represent knowledge commons governance, in the sense that they rely on collectively-managed technologies to pool and manage distributed information, illustrating the usefulness and novelty of the GCK methodology with an empirical case study of the evolution of Bitcoin, and laying the foundation for a research program using the GKC approach.

AbstractThis paper analyses the origin of innovation using institutional economic theory. Because of distributed information and fundamental uncertainty, an efficient institutional context for the economic organization of innovation in its early stages is often that of a common pool resource. The theory of theinnovation commonsdraws upon Hayek, Williamson and Ostrom to present the innovation problem as a combined knowledge problem, implicit contracting problem and collective action governance problem. Innovation commons theory also implies that Kirzner's model of entrepreneurial opportunity discovery extends to higher-order groups, suggesting a multilevel selection model of economic evolution.