Barbed wire on the Internet prairie

The French approach to the digital policy space never ceases to amaze¹! Yesterday i stumbled across a paper ("Barbed wire on the Internet prairie: against new enclosures, digital commons as drivers of sovereignty") published in July on the blog of the Digital Diplomacy team of the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères. As implied by the title this paper embraces the concept of the digital commons as mechanism for advancing Europe’s strategic sovereignty in the digital space:

Insofar as the development of digital commons is relatively absent from sovereignty policies at the European level, it is necessary to identify the resources likely to be jointly managed and exploited, while raising awareness among our partners, particularly European ones, of the strategic dimension of digital commons, in order to mobilize them accordingly.

The purpose of this article is therefore not to define the scope of digital commons in a technical, economic or political perspective, but rather to reflect on their strategic potential for Europe, within a digital world dominated by private monopolistic players, and driven by the structuring rivalry between China and the United States.

This is of course a much more pointed version of the argument that we have been making in our Vision for a Shared Digital Europe in which cultivating the Commons features as one of the core principles of building a shared digital Europe.

In this context it is intersting to see a paper published by the French Governement² suddenly (and quite forcefully) position the digital commmons as a core element of a future EU digital strategy:

This logic of commons is perfectly aligned with the values and vision of the digital space defended by France and promoted to our European partners and beyond: a safe, open, unique and neutralspace. In addition,because they directly defend a model and priorities which are also those of the EU (preserving general interest, fair competition, net neutrality, personal data protection, environmental sustainability, etc.), digital commons should also become one of the pillars of a European sovereignty policy, from which they have so far been absent.

And it is even more welcome the paper also calls for investment into building a sustainable digital commons in Europe:

[…] This shows the urgent need to protect and therefore guarantee the sustainability, especially economic, of digital commons projects; their non-rival characteristic and lack of inclination to capital accumulation makes it difficult to finance them nor make them profitable. This would imply the creation of a support fund for existing digital commons, along the lines of the EU-FOSSA project. This fund could be fueled by European private and public players to start with, before being potentially extended to any other actor sharing our concerns.

[…]In addition, it may be possible to create a European foundation for the digital commons, an entity that would be responsible for managing the financing mentioned above, but which could also host and support new initiatives (through legal advice, labeling, hackathons and code sprints, calls for projects, etc.). In order to counter possible attempts at recapitalisation, looting or exclusive capture, it could ensure that licences are respected, but also establish possible transfers of ownership and therefore of responsibilities – financing, governance, optimisation, etc. – within itself.

Lastly, the European strategy in this field should include an international component. Our vision of digital sovereignty is non-hegemonic and this sovereignty must therefore show how it fits with a concept of international governance which guarantees a “free, open and safe” digital world through multilateralism – as a mutual and mutually accepted constraint. The commons are, here again, useful in guaranteeing open digital infrastructures – be it against attacks on confidence and security in cyberspace (according to the Paris Call wording) but also against risks created by political control, technological mastery or financial domination.

Unfortunately the paper feels a bit like a one-off effort to launch an idea which is a bit of a pity since the underlying idea is a sound one. Making a strong digital commons part of the EU digital policy would be a strategic choice that would set it appart from the current attempts that are not fundamentally different from the current (US dominated) approach to the digital space. And having the French government as an ally in this fight would certainly be welcome.