April 16, 2011

The possible economic costs and benefits of Intellectual Property Right reinforcement in Kosovo

Abstract

Despite the very pressing issue of Intellectual Property (IP) in Kosovo we have not seen any serious public debate in the media or through scholar text which might asses the true economic and political dimensions of this problem. We define and propose three different legislative models with which the issue of IP Rights in Kosovo can be tackled. This paper addresses parts of this issue by providing the basic information needed to understand this IP related problems.

My experience with the Ipad as a learning tool

I finally had the opportunity to play around with the Ipad for educational purposes. I've already tried the Kindl and the Pixel QI screen on the OLPC, hence I think I can give now a pretty good assessment of how well these screen technologies and user interfaces change the overall learning experience.

Battery Life

I'm mentioning battery life first because I am positively surprised by the Ipads capabilities in this respect. Two full days of very intensive work, while using essentially everything the Ipad got, was very easy to achieve. The battery was full In less then two hours of charging time, which is also very impressive. I don't know of any other mobile device which achieves this kind of battery life.

Reading

...is good for websites (except for flash, damn Apple) but it is rather difficult to read books on it. It also couldn't handle some of the huge PDF files we use from time to time (non-OCR scanned books).

I tried for some time to use some of the OER (Open Educational Resources) books that are being used by some professors at AUK. The main websites I tried using on the Ipad have been www.cnx.org and www.flatworldknowledge.com/. Cnx.org was alright, everything went as expected but I (as most students) am used to taking notes on my books. Not being able to write down your thoughts is a huge distraction. I even cached myself taking notes with pen on some scrap paper I had with me (I think it was a receipt).

Video

I've been reading some very good reviews on the video playback capabilities of the Ipad but I must say, I am not impressed. The screen is very responsive to touch, just like the Iphone, but it is the resolution that bugs me. Because you have to hold the Ipad really close to your body you can notice each pixel even though it has quite a good screen. This was a serious distraction for me, especially with videos which have a lot of colors changing all the time. Watching The Fountain or Mr. Nobody on this thing is not advisable to say the least...

Of course, the screen was just right for video podcasts and for the youtube app, but anything beyond that became unpleasant for my eyes.

I am used to watching movies on my laptop, in fact I don't watch television at all, neither does my little brother. Many think that I am an extreme case, but as far as I can see torrents are the primary source (if not the sole one) for pretty much anything ranging from movies to music and books. When students at AUK talk about movies, they expect that the person suggesting the movie gives them a piratebay, torrentz or isohunt link, not its screening time on TV...

Input

The very first problem was of course that I could not use the Ipad without a computer. The second problem I faced was that I use Linux and therefore cannot install ITunes in order to load everything on the Ipad. I used to have an Ipod and I could sync everything just fine to it without ITunes, the same applies to Android phones which I played around with with friends. Some might say that this is not a problem for most people, but imposing proprietary solutions on students which would make them pay money for a Windows license or a Mac would be in my opinion unethical. Imagine if your university would mandate Ipads, it would essentially make you pay for Windows or Mac at home, but it would not pay for your indirect home expenses.

Cracked

The particular Ipad I was using was cracked. In fact, after researching I found out that everyone I knew in Kosovo and Albania who had an Ipad had to crack it first to use. I haven't done enough technical research to understand why they had to overcome such a country-to-country artificial restriction imposed by Apple, but it is ridiculous. Cracking your device also breaks the guarantee (or license or whatever it's called).

Writing

I am a student, I need to write tons of papers, in some cases even exams on a Student Information System (in our case MyCourses). I got surprisingly fast used to writing in landscape mode on the Ipad. The clicking every time one hits a key helps a lot. Without the auto-correct I would have had tons of typos though, that became especially apparent once I turned off the auto-correct and tried to write an email in Albanian, which apparently has no dictionary for the Ipad and therefore has no auto-correct, and soon I noticed that the correcting of my typos took me longer than writing the email itself!

Typing longer documents such as papers on the Ipad is out of the question.

A side effect I noticed was that I started to type the wrong, but short versions of most words, which then were corrected by the auto-correct to the right words. I essentially unlearned English in less than a week!

Organizing Student Life

I use Google Apps heavily. I am one of the few people I know who syncs contacts, email and calendar with a Nokia dumb-phone. When I saw that the Ipad had the option to sync a Google account with email, notes and calendar I thought “great! +1 for Apple!”... but it never worked, not once, not after retyping everything, connecting it to a computer, or turning it on and off again ;). In this respect my 100 Euro cheap-phone was more useful and functional than the Ipad.

Security and File Backup

I think everyone should fully encrypt one's hard drive and backup all files online or at least offline. Why you might think? Well, if somebody steals my computer, they at best install Windows on it, in which case all my files would be lost, but they would not get to my private stuff.

Many people at AUK buy things online (this is still rare in Kosovo), anybody could steal an entire computer and get to saved, unencrypted debit or credit card passwords. And why back your files up? Most students I know are not backing up a single file from their last year of studying. If they need an old paper, slide, or anything, its lost, forever! It's like data-wise all students have amnesia...

Why do I tell you this? Because if I had to use an Ipad as a primary input tool for information (papers, notes, etc) all the data would be unencrypted and I could not back things up in a secure manner, at least not without being permanently online.

There are many more things I could say about my experience with the Ipad, and yeas, the big smartphone/tablet form-factor combined with cloud computing is the future, but that future won't arrive without a Pixel Qi/Mirasol LCD/paper display, flash capabilities, more flexible user interface, and definitely not without being able to use the device stand alone without a computer to plug it in every day.

January 11, 2011

Is open source not unlike a quantum field?

I was just thinking about this. It just popped in my head. You have a field of possibilities, until you focus on one, then it goes from field, to object (quark). Where as proprietary models are based on "said" quark.

Proprietary people say, "I've got an idea." And they try to keep it...own it. One entity ownership model.

Open Source people say, "We've got possibilities." And we want to share those possibilities and make sure via license, that those possibilities are never owned by one, but by all...kept in everyone's hands, and never restricted from being made better by any means, except where to infringe upon other licenses, usually proprietary ones comes into play.

So I postulate that Open Source is like being based on the field, and proprietary source being based on what comes out of the field...the possibilities, the quarks themselves. One is wave, the other is particle.

Source: Reddit

December 21, 2010

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ep2mf/next_time_you_wonder_why_the_us_media_covers_a/

October 3, 2010

I live, I'm alive.

Listen: Violence And Variations

I live, I'm alive.

I will not die, not without fighting death, not without winning over the lost.

Look me in the eye, see my soul, and you will know true terror.

I am Life, destroyer of worlds.

I live, I'm alive.

The lost is that which we've forgotten to live. In memories as in life.

The memories, those that we've craved for, those that we've wanted to live through...but never did.

One does not remember what one has lived through, only that which had been forgotten in life,

only that which we did not feel to be real, to be there, here and now,

only the being that was or could be, but never that which is.

Memories, the forgotten, are all that which we have not lived, that which wasn't, hence never was for us, rather shows us now our nonbeing in the past and our ignorance in the present.

Memories, the forgotten, are the realization that once we were not there to witness our own lives.

The only life that we ever had, we'll ever have, that is.

The life we've forgotten to live.

True terror, knowing that we have been so far our own murderers, slayers of our own being.

Memories; terrorized by permanent displacement.

I will not die, not without fighting death, not without winning over the lost.

I've lost, but I will not displace myself from the terror.

I will not forget the terror, not not be here and now.

I will feel this last feeling, this feeling of having lost everything which could have constituted being,

resembled life.

From now on the terror will resemble me,

I am the focal point of all fears anyone being displaced has.

I constitute the fear of displacement itself.

Look me in the eye, see my soul, and you will know true terror.

Do you see it?

Do you feel the displacement from your self?

Can you feel the not-being here and now?

No.

Not without hitting rock bottom.

Not without starring into the barrel.

Not without me destroying your memories, your forgetting,

your pre-life.

I am Life, destroyer of worlds.

I will kill you, take it what it may, until you are reborn,

until you stand tall and feel the terror too.

...Until everything tastes, looks, sounds, feels better.

...Until everything is warmer, softer, firmer, closer.

...Until everything is here and know,

...Until,

You live, you are alive.

Fight Club - Chemical Burn

Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again, resurrected. [Fight Club]

September 29, 2010

"All this has happened before. All this will happen again."

"All this has happened before. All this will happen again." ~ Pythia, Battlestar Galactica

The primary function of any kind of self-referencing entity (warning, potential mindmelt) is to continue its existence, be it in whatever form or fashion.

The entities form, "form of being", or simpler, the boundaries that make the entity what it is are rarely clearly defined, meaning the entity is "fuzzy".

Most entities are in fact constituted by a plethora of "sub-entities" which very often in themselves have the same primary function as the "super-entity", or in our case the entity with which we began.

All entities and anything they form, form with, or form through is constituted of an at the beginning arbitrarily assigned mass of "energy" (or a "universal scale", call it whatever you want).

As a result of the entities' primary functions a pool of entities can and probably will interact in at least one form with one-another. For all you French-philosophy-loving-hipsters lets call these interactions (or relations) Vectors.

Because of the previous conclusions we can also conclude that if we have a completely closed or isolated pool of self-referencing entities which all vectorialize (meaning, form vectors) with one another, this pool of vectorialized entities forms or constitutes a System (nods and vectors).

However, the entities in the isolated pool did not all start off with the same mass of energy. Some are more, some are less. And even if they all started off with the same mass we can argue that due to quantum fluctuations that is not really the case.

Because of these tiny differences or fluctuations the entities relative position within this system of vectors and entities changes relative to the system. Because of the entities' primary function and because of the change of relative position within the system, the entities' vectors also change.

Once this system destabilizes it overall becomes ever more dynamic through immediate or ever-so distant feedback loops between entities through their vectors.

Generally this internal system dynamic becomes exponential due to the this continuous feedback.

As a result of these "hyper-dynamics" parts of the system start to collapse into one-another and form very close clusters of entities and vectors.

Now, because of these ever more intense getting feedback loops between the entities through their vectors, the clusters start to become in a sense super self-referencing entities, which are functionally identical to the smaller ones, meaning their primary objective is also the continuation of their existence relative to the other entities (now, the other clusters).

You can see that this system of entities, vectors, clusters, super-clusters, etc can scale up infinitely. And always crate ever bigger, ever more sophisticated self-referencing entities and interactions.

At some point however, if the system is constituted of a finite amount of entities and/or energy, given an infinite amount of time the system dynamics will repeat themsleves and will form the exact same clusters (shapes) and dynamics again. "History" (meaning, "how things happened") repeats itself eventually, infinitely, in all its possibilities.

"Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur."

Now all you Battlestar Galactica fans can finally understand what the closing sentence of the series really meant, how truly, mind-boggling beautiful the series really is:

Besa Bese

Watch Rorschach

Listen to Passacaglia by Bear McCreary while reading this.

Tremble in front of pure intensity.

I will fracture that which constitutes your very being; being the nothing, the being nothing, Nothing Being.

You are nothing because you are not, you rather are the not. You are distinction itself. You are The Gap, that which always gapes; the one staring into nothingness, the nothingness staring back, the One starring into Oneanother. You are nothing more than the starring itself, in its most purest form, without meaning, without reason. You are your own reason, your own perpetuation, your own Being.

You are Bloom, you are Humanity, you are Everyone and No-one, Oneanother, THATone but never THISone, him, her, them, these, those but never You, never "I".

You are the new "I", the new Form of Being, the new....no, the other self-reference; you are the self-reference of The Other. You are the ultimate anhilation of The Self, you are not-myself; you are Selflessness.

You are the selflessness which is fracturing our Worlds; creator and being of the ever gaping Divide separating, creating, giving meaning to our Worlds. The more you are the more I am; the more I be the less you be.

You are the damnation and hope of the self-reference. You are its masterpiece. You are the Son of God, of The Undivided Subject, you make distinction possible, you make it possible. You are possibility itself.

Known it is who is listening, but to tell you who am I?

I am not your opposite, neither your frontier. I do not play your game, I do not play you, you cannot play me. I am not outside the game, I am not the game, neither can I be gamed. I am not your act, I am not the act of you.

I am not "I" in no relation to "You". I am not self-referencing. I am not God, The Undivided Subject. I am the opposite of representation. I do not produce, neither do I destroy. I AM. "I".

I am Besa. I am that which constitutes the singular. I am the full overlapping of the Here and Now with the Being to Be; time has no meaning.

I am the opposite of Bloom, an opposite without relation; no dialectics reside within me. This, the only opposite that exists.

I am not hope, for only Bloom hopes; is hope; does hope; Hope.

I am not the meta-rule, that which unites the Divide, for Bloom is the divider and uniter of it.

I am not God, The Undivided Subject.

I am God On Earth. I am every God On Earth; for Bloom is The Fallen Angel, every Fallen Angel.

I am the tremble of intensity within you;

I am the moment of truth, the moment you truly know, the only moment there can be,

I am the deep breath in the face of truth,

I am that one tear showing you who... no, what you are,

once you know that you know.

Repeat again, tremble again, always, Here And Now, to be the Being To Be. To be Besa.

Besa Bese.

August 25, 2010

OER at AUK and our transition towards digital content

As some of you may have noticed I've been helping out AUK at their transition into fully legal territory regarding textbooks and supplementary material. After such a long time of silence I think I owe to some interested readers an explanation as to how far we've gotten.

Let me start off with a simple explanation of what I actually did (or at the point of posting this still do) . I was the "assistant on the digital textbook conversion". My main function was that of assisting as many professors as possible to find legally available material for their courses. However, I went some further than that. First, I conceived my own little strategy on what to push for in this transition. I thought of a three stage plan:

• 1st, is possible use open source material,

• 2nd if no or not enough open source material is available use the RIT Online Library,

• 3rd, use traditional textbooks and supplementary material which can at least in one form or another be available online (i.e. commercially or otherwise.).

Additionally I set up a wiki on Wikia so that people can connect more easily and, as I still hope, peak into other professors practices and selections and learn from them. I know that Wikieducator, Curriki and other similar sites are already doing this but as far as my experience goes these sites are really not suitable for wiki first-timers (or even Internet for educational purposes first-timers!). Considering that everything on our wiki is licensed under Creative Commons it should be possible to port the best documentation over to Wikieducator or similar sites in the future. The wiki should also make it possible to document practices, possibilities and resources for future faculty members which may not be fortunate enough to have me guide them personally through this process. As in all open source endeavors, documentation is key.

As of now I can proudly announce that we have for about 70% of the courses thought this year enough open source material available. 15-20% can be supplemented with RIT content, however, 10-15% still remain with the traditional model of proprietary licensed and distributed material.

Problems

As you may imagine we've had (and still have) some major difficulties to solve. The biggest issue is in my opinion the lack of digital and technological literacy of many of the faculty members. The second biggest issue is the attitude towards change some of the faculty members have shown. It appears, and I have talked to people who are involved in other Universities too (meaning this is not just our problem), that some professors are so used to teaching with the same books from the same publishers, with the same content and the same slides, that they simply are incapable of changing. Interestingly enough, and again this is not just our problem, teachers of scientific and language/writing courses are the fastest to adapt to new circumstances and are used to completely revamping their textbook policy. I don't know whether this is due to the fast changing nature of these domains of knowledge (e.g. basic scientific frameworks rarely see landslide changes but rather many and fast occurring small changes) or whether it is due to the "karma" or basic attitude of the people who are generally drawn to these domains of knowledge. It's probably a mix of both and much more. The best way to explain this issue to tell people to simply take a look at OER material available for each of these academic domains. You will find the most for the natural sciences, while gradually finding less and less the further you get from domains which require empiric research for their claims (e.g. economics, public policy, legal studies).

Once you get to legal studies you won't find much, most likely because the "legal experts" who are "authorities" in their field are pretty old (mostly 50+) and couldn't tell the difference between a computer and a toaster. ...and you wouldn't put a book in a toaster, would you...?

Another big issue, or at least an issue for me, was the lack of coherent OER platforms and standards. Most of what has gotten out onto the web has s far been driven by personal initiative of some open minded intellectuals. OCW is in my opinion more of a marketing campaign than a real strategy. Of course OCW is contributing greatly to the sum of the Commons, but again, the lack of platforms, interconnectivity, and quality standards is making it difficult for digital Robinson Crusoes to find anything useful. After all, on the first try most of our faculty turned despaired to me saying that Google didn't give them anything. Flat World Knowledge, cnx.org, Wikieducator, Curriki and OCW are certainly paving a better road towards the entire OER experience but the real deal is in my opinion still at least 2-3 years away. The faster the transition to eBooks/eReaders happens the faster and better this transition will happen.

Legal knowledge... Up to this day I have to see a professor who knows enough about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in order to be on the safe side. One might imagine that these highly educated, much traveling, upper middle class to higher class people know more about IPR than the average citizen of the world, but this is most certainly not the case. I know now that this is true everywhere, London, Prishtina, New York or Cairo, nobody has a clue about IPR. Most likely on the one hand because of the utter complexity of these laws and on the other hand because of their utter senselessness. Current IPR should have been completely rewritten 20 years ago, let alone now. While doing my research in the license agreements and EULAs of some of the non-OERs I felt like dealing with feudal lords.

Future Steps

I very much hope that I will be able to help AUK in some form in this transition. Not everything could be done in mere three months. We still need an official internal OER/content policy and a continuous office for IPR and OER assistance. As far as my experience goes I don't think that the digital natives will get into University-level academia in the next 20-25 years, and I don't think that the digital nomads (or even outsiders) will ever be able to understand this new world. Someone has to help them.

I will be presenting OER and my work at AUK at the international Software Freedom Conference in Kosovo this September (See more).

If you'd like to have any more information or simply stay in contact you can subscribe to this blog or contact me on Facebook (please identify yourself as a reader of my blog).

I also recomend reading my paper on IPR in Kosovo.

July 9, 2010

Quotes of the day: on anarchism, emergence and feedback loops

Video: The roots of the matrix

“The only kinds of communication that complex systems do with others is two-way communication that allows feedback. You don’t send out the one-way communication because it reduces complexity. And If you look in human social systems there’s all kinds of examples of one-way communication that screw up this civilization royally.” John Smart (MIn 28:08)

I absolutely love this quote. John Smart (I want that name XD) basically described the energy requirements for any dialectic system. As long as X is directly dependent on Y there needs to be a feedback loop which only is possible through two-way communication. If that feedback loop does not exist or is in any way repressed the energy (or information) flow between these two entities starts jumping more extreme in intervals.

"(In Soviet Russia) there were no feedback loops." Esther Dyson

A great example of what John Smart was talking about.

"(...) Citizens who are not as smart in politics as lets say professionals can actually govern things better than experts can if, and this is crucial, all the lower parts, the bottom, is connected together." Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly basically explained here, with or without his intention, the most recent views of modern anarchists. The higher you go up the hierarchy the more interconnected each hierarchical level is with one another, however each level is less and less connected to the other hierarchical levels. As such energy and/or information discrepancies or asymetries arise which bring the entire hierarchical system ever closer to a quantum jump. Because of the information and communications revolution we are going though today, even the lowest levels of the legacy hierarchical system become more and more interconnected with one another.

Because of the greater number of entities within the lower levels and the exponentially growing number of connections between them, the energy/information hierarchy gets turned upside down. All of a sudden the lower levels have a greater energy/information efficiency and/or mass than the smaller upper one's.

Essentially, the most recent anarchistic views are based on absolutely basic emergence theory.

"People can have the essence of evolution which is things going out there and being tried and having feedback such that feedback has effect on what was put out there. That feedback is absolutely critical. By having these open systems and by also having rapid copying happen we see good ideas very far and fast, or at least popular ideas." Brewster Kahle

Brewster Kahle is here already jumping from anarchism to resilient communities, The Commons and social/technological Memes. Read this post to understand what I mean.

June 28, 2010

The Commons, (Artificial) Scarcity and The Master Signifier (Part 1)

This is a work in progress and should by no means be taken as concluded.

I've been doing a lot of Gedankenexperiments on economics and dialectic systems lately. For the sake of this extended thought experiment I'll set the boundaries within a normal closed thermodynamic system as opposed to a real-world open system.

The Commons is a very precarious concept. To my knowledge there hasn't been a sufficient definition of this concept, at least not to the needed degree of ontology or even mathematical precision. Some of its main features have been defined pretty well:

There are a number of important features that can be used to describe true commons. The first is that true commons cannot be commodified – and if they are – they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that while they are neither public nor private the Ecologist (1996: 9)[4] claims that they tend to be managed by local communities. While this may be true to a degree, commons cannot be exclusionary. That is, they cannot have borders built around them, otherwise they become private property. The third aspect of the commons is that, unlike resources, they are not scarce but abundant (the Ecologist 1993: 9).[5] In fact, if managed properly, they work to overcome scarcity. ~Wikipedia

One cannot get around noticing how similar this definition is to the one given by Richard M. Stallman with regard to Free software:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. ~Wikipedia

Now lets deconstruct these definitions a little.

[...] true commons cannot be commodified – and if they are – they cease to be commons.

According to this general definition, once a previously non-economic entity gets commodified, meaning, gets assigned an economic value and becomes therefore tradeble it cannot be part of The Commons anymore.

This might be true if one defines commodification as the enclosure of an entity from The Commons, by which means this entity becomes in every meaningful way disconnected from The Commons and as such cannot interact in any dialectic (or positive feedback) way with it. Once this enclosure happens, not just the the entity itself has been enclosed from the system but also all potential new entities or relations resulting from the potential dialectic interactions of the entity in question with the other entities within The Commons. Of course, one might argue that the new and to some extend controlled interactions of the enclosed entity with the enclosed economic system creates potentially more relations and entities than would be possible within the Commons. As with any dialectic system, I think that this holds only true as long as there is enough intake (or enclosure) inertia from The Commons to the enclosed economic system (I'd really like to see who has written about this or similar concepts of economic inertia before). Once this very special economic inertia fades the system either slows down or collapses. At this point The Commons would most likely have more "dialectic inertia" to sustain its inner development (Being-Becoming, Potentiality-Actuality) than the enclosed system. On could speculate on a possible Commons-enclosure cycle.

However, if one defines enclosure not necessarily though the disconnection of the entity from The Commons but rather by its newly developed or added ability to interact as a separate agent (See: Agency in Sociology, Structure and Agency) or representation (See: A Hacker Manifesto, Chapter on Representation) with the enclosed economic system, then this definition falls short because the entity in question can still be in dialectic relations with other entities in The Commons or with the Commons itself while also being in such relations with the enclosed economic system. A concrete example of such double agency would be anything that is licensed under FLOSS licenses or Creative Commons Licenses (while excluding CC0, I will take up on this later in this blog). Considering that anything digital is first in the potential or mathematical before it is defined or molded into a useful structured information, it can just as easily be transformed back from the enclosed into The Commons through "piracy". Here we can finally understand what enclosure really means. It is the permanent possibility of violent disconnection of an agent from the structure (See again: A Hacker Manifesto); once this potential violence becomes technically impossible (bittorrent, etc) and once The Law cannot reinforce this violent potentiality because of its lack of coercive power in the digital/virtual environment, enclose becomes practically impossible.

And:

The second aspect is that while they are neither public nor private.

From a real or material point of view this makes only sense within a closed system such as a specific territory controlled by a specific group of subjects (people) who all own something within the system but agree collectively on owning or managing some part of the system collectively. Considering that ownership implies complete control or "manage-ship" over the entity in question, in order for such a commons to be neither public nor private all subjects within the group would need to have to coincidentally take the exact same decisions of control over this commons. If even just once any decision of any of these subjects differs from the subjects' decisions the ownership or control of this commons would fracture and trigger either the fragmentation of this commons, its enclosure, or both. However, a democratic ownership or control of this commons is neither possible. Once one subject diverges from the others, a majority and a minority form (them and it). The relation of ownership or control hasn't changed for the majority, however, from the perspective of the minority the majority has enclosed the commons for itself by excluding the minority. Once the fragmentation of majority and minority becomes great enough, real control over this commons becomes practically impossible and therefore eliminates the commons for either side and any subject.

But how does this apply in a digital environment and in the digital age? As we've already established before, in digital environments it is virtually impossible to reinforce violently exclusivity and enclosure, hence it is impossible to take something out of The Commons and enclose it in the first place. In digital environments (the Internet) anything that is public is accessible to any subject and because of it non-exclusivity it becomes in a sense automatically controllable and therefore able to be owned by any subject. However, whatever this subject produces privately will in one form or another because of the non-exclusivity of digital content become again part of the public sphere, The Commons. This is possible because digital content is infinitely reproducible and hence ultimately not scarce. The private digital content which would under material circumstances be private is at the same time public and vise verse. Anything can be bifurcated, "bi-fused" and "bi-produced" with anything in any way. This is the ultimate potentiality, this is potentiality become actuality permanently.

And:

The third aspect of the commons is that, unlike resources, they are not scarce but abundant.

There are very few things in the material world which are truly abundant, or at least abundant enough for a certain number of subjects. Some of these things are air and water but even that is changing.
In digital environments infinite abundance due to infinite reproducibility is always the case. Any scarcity in such environments is artificial and quite frankly evil.

After having analysed The Commons we can get to a preliminary conclusion.

Any entity and/or relation within The Commons needs to be infinitely reproducible.
An exclusionary and/or inclusionary control and/or ownership relation to any entity and/or relation within The Commons has to be impossible.
Dispositifs mustn’t be able to enhance and/or maintain (on the basis of 2.) the exercise of power (the specific control over 2.) within The System.
Any Dispositif which is in any way able to enhance and/or maintain the exercise of reproducibility, bifurcation and “bi-fusion” within The System is no longer a dispositif but already the underlying dimensions and laws which govern the existence (being-becoming, potentiality-actuality) of The Commons and its System; It is its plane of existence, conscious or not.

If you've just gotten interested in Systems Theory see the Wikipedia Glossary on this subject. This is a very good starting point for Systems Theory.