27 Oct
2011
27 Oct
'11
11:59 p.m.
On 10/28/2011 5:44 AM, William Herrin wrote:
A commons is jointly owned, either by a non-trivial number of private owners or by all citizens of a government.
The practical use of the term is a bit broader: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons> As rule, the term gets applied to situations of fate-sharing when actions by some affect utility for many. You cited air pollution. The Internet can suffer comparable effects. Spam can reasonably be called pollution and it has a systemic effect on all users. For such an issue, it's reasonable and even helpful to view it as a commons. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net