From P2P Foundation

= This new section covers mainly legal blocks and facilitators for cooperative, p2p and commons-oriented, sharing-based practices and solutions.

Contents 1 Key Initiatives 2 Key Topics 2.1 Facilitating Sharing and Cooperation through the Law 2.2 The Law and the Commons 2.3 Legal Facilitation for Open Hardware and Production 2.4 Personhood of Corporations 2.5 New Commons-Friendly Enterprise Formats 2.6 Protecting Indigenous / Traditional Knowledge 3 Key Resources 3.1 Key Articles 3.2 Key Audio/Video 3.3 Key Books 3.4 Key Courses 3.5 Key People

Key Initiatives

Worthy of Support:

• "The Commons Law Project is an ecological governance initiative that Professor Weston and I are pursuing in cooperation with The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR) and the Vermont Law School Environmental Law Center (VLS-ELC). Rights-based and commons driven, the Project seeks to recover and refurbish the law of the commons from Roman times, the Magna Carta, and points before and since to put forward a new contemporary law of the ecological commons grounded in human rights.

• The Sustainable Economies Law Center from Janelle Orsi seeks to diminish legal constraints on human cooperation and sharing. See: Janelle Orsi on Legal Challenges to Collaborative Consumption and Sharing

Key Topics

Facilitating Sharing and Cooperation through the Law

1. Shareable Magazine's 20-part series on policies that foster resource sharing, co-production, and mutual aid in cities: http://www.shareable.net/blog/policies-for-a-shareable-city
2. Crowdfunding and the Law. Janelle Orsi, SELC
3. How the Law Is Used To Stifle the Sharing Economy. Chris Laroche.

The Law and the Commons

1. Commons Law
2. Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law
3. Global Legal Commons
4. Law of the Commons
5. Legal Commons and Social Commons
6. Legal Form of the Commons

See also:

1. Open Law
2. Open Source Law

Legal Facilitation for Open Hardware and Production

1. Open Source Licensing as a Legal and Economic Modality for the Dissemination of Renewable Energy
2. Opening Hardware through Legal Tools ; Recommended Open Hardware Licenses

Personhood of Corporations

1. How Corporations Became People ; John Bonifaz on Revoking Corporate Personhood
2. Outlawing the For-Profit Corporate Form (via the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy of the late Richard Grossman)
3. Using Corporate Governance Law to Benefit All Stakeholders

Background reading:

• The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy. By Marjorie Kelly. Berrett-Koehler, 2001.

New Commons-Friendly Enterprise Formats

1. Open Companies
2. Open Company Legal Research Group
3. Intro to For-Benefit Corporations‎ and other Fourth Sector Organizations

See our special section on Open Company Formats !

Protecting Indigenous / Traditional Knowledge

1. Bioculture vs Biopiracy: Alternative Approaches for Protecting Indigenous Traditional Knowledge
2. Imagining a Traditional Knowledge Commons ; Implementing a Traditional Knowledge Commons
3. Patenting Traditional Knowledge ; Protecting Community Traditional Knowledge Rights
4. Traditional Knowledge ; Traditional Knowledge Commons ; Traditional Knowledge Commons License ; Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

Key Resources

Key Articles

• The Life of the Law Online by David R. Johnson First Monday, Volume 11, Number 2 - 6 February 2006 (recommended by David Bollier)

Key Audio/Video

1. Greg Lastowka on Virtual Justice and the New Laws of Online Worlds

Key Books

1. Greg Lastowka. Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds.

Key Courses

• Digital Citizens Basics, an online course on digital rights and duties, proposed by Marco Fioretti [1]

Key People

1. David Bollier, Commons Law Project
2. Carolina Botero, Colombia
3. Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation legal counsel
4. Janelle Orsi, Sustainable Economies Law Center