THE COMMONS

• commons is a way to 'copy write' stuff and 'open source' is commonly held soft ware ... see also, some medicines and windmills ...
• Boston is full of Victorian easements ... the common paths, as well as town greens (grazing land) ...
• Commons is the concept of certain things being "common property"...that which can NOT be taken for private property. It runs back to Roman law and before, Old Testament, MiddleEastern/Asian law, etc, and is now becoming a huge part of the environmental battle and battles for heritage protection, etc. If we can establish a "strong commons" that includes things like "the eco-system" or things more obscure things like "healthcare" or "a healthy food supply", what happens is that we establish our "right" to things. And then if people want to make profit on them, they can be "granted" a permit for whatever, which we can revoke, if we're not happy. So if someone pollutes the water, they have "taken" our water...that "taking" has more rights legally than someone simply releasing some pollutants against a regulation. Our current system of law is based on colonies being carved out and given away to governments who were/are put in place to enforce the rights of those colonial corporations to extract resources. Colonists took over the country and gave away the "right to commerce". That is illegal, by the way, in a country with a strong commons, and many consider the entire US to be an illegal government, accordingly. Latin American countries are falling over themselves adopting Commons language, by the way...to keep the capitalists at bay. Anyway, count on me to fill in that part. I'll probably link it to the wiki page that we started working on Commons on. I thought I'd already installed that link. I'll check again.
• Ah, commons.... "Land" and "money" are the only two common goods. You may want to read my "The economics of jubilation' that you can find here.