Thread by @doctorow

I met @mala on 9/11/01, at a surreal dinner we pressed on with despite (or really, because of) the intense terror of the day. He was wearing a t-shirt from NTK, his seminal digital newsletter, bearing its slogan: "THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK"

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Online culture has its roots in a strange swirl of hobbyists, the military, corporate misfits fooling around with their employers' vast computer labs and students and academics dabbling in the early digital world.

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It was no garden of Eden. There was plenty of fighting and plenty of difference, but there was, despite it all, a sense of mission: a collegial urgency to build a commons that would be part of the digital world that everyone could use.

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Right from the start, there was a sense that this commons was wonderful and fragile, facing a remorseless enclosure movement that would turn all our collective work into someone's private, rent-generating preserve.

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It's been 20 years since I met Danny, and the enclosure is well underway. Danny - who's been warning us about stolen revolutions and fighting to steal them back since last century - has now embarked on a wonderful series of essays for @eff on the subject.

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These essays are grouped under the banner of the "#PublicInterestInternet," EFF's equivalent to @EthanZ's "digital public infrastructure" @hanaschank's "public interest technology," the @EU's "public stack" and @elipariser's "New Public."

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

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Despite decades of sustained assault, the Public Interest Internet is still with us and still vital, from the @internetarchive to @wikipedia to @creativecommons to the vast array of #FLOSS projects. Any effort to rein in Big Tech must not destroy these vital commons.

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Danny: "When Big Tech is long gone, a better future will come from the seed of this public interest internet: seeds that are being planted now, and which need everyone to nurture them."

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Danny's published two case studies so far. The first, "The Enclosure of the Public Interest Internet," recounts how early film enthusiasts migrated from Usenet's rec.arts.movies to the volunteer-maintained and hosted Cardiff Movie Database.

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

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You probably haven't heard of the Cardiff Movie Database, but you've certainly heard of @imdb, the Amazon-owned system it turned out, privatizing the hard work of public-spirited volunteers and turning it into the exclusive preserve of a digital monopolist.

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IMDB shows us how volunteers' passion projects can turn into someone else's private concern, but as Danny writes, this isn't inevitable. From @wikimedia to @openstreetmap, public interest projects have shown how to resist enclosure

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The next installment is "Outliving Outrage on the Public Interest Internet: the CDDB Story." The first great volunteer music metadata database became the private property of Nielsen.

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

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But the volunteer love of music is alive and well: from gnudb to @MetaBrainz, public interest music metadata - a necessity for finding, enjoying, and paying for music - has resisted enclosure.

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The next installment - still forthcoming - deals with the thorny question of how you finance a commons.

There's always someone who wants to steal the revolution. But there's always a rebel alliance who'll fight to steal it back.

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/dis…