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@@ -7,65 +7,42 @@ layout: post
 La parodia de los comunes
 =========================
 
-tripleC 11(2): 412-424, 2013 http://www.triple-c.at
-
-The Parody of the Commons Vasilis Kostakis1 and Stelios Stavroulakis2 1
-
-Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, P2P Lab,
-Greece, kostakis.b@gmail.com, www.p2plab.gr/en 2 P2P Lab, Greece,
-sstavra@gmail.com, www.p2plab.gr/en
-
-## Abstract
-
-This essay builds on
-the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement
-within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need
-of protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive
-social movements. We use theory and examples to claim that peer-to-peer
-economic relations can be undermined in the long run, distorted by
-the extraeconomic means of a political context designed to maintain
-profit-driven relations of production into power. This subversion can
-arguably become a state policy, and the subsequent outcome is the full
-absorption of the Commons as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer
-relations into the dominant mode of production. To tackle this threat,
+> Publicado originalmente en tripleC 11: 412-424, 2013
+> http://www.triple-c.at
+>
+> Vasilis Kostakis es un economista político y el fundador del _P2P
+> Lab_.  En la actualidad es investigador miembro de la Universidad
+> Tecnológica de Tallinn así como de la _P2P Foundation_.  Stelios
+> Stavroulakis es un científico informático e ingeniero de software
+> interesado en los sistemas informáticos distribuidos con un enfoque
+> particular en el software libre y los estándares abiertos, así
+> como una atención particular sobre las problemáticas sociales y
+> ambientales.  Es también, colaborador del _P2P Lab_.
+
+
+Abstract
+--------
 
 Este ensayo se basa en la idea de que la producción de pares basada en
 los bienes comunes es un avance social dentro del capitalismo pero con
 varios aspectos post-capitalistas que necesitan protección, aplicación,
 estimulación y conexión con movimientos sociales progresivos.  Usamos
-teoría y ejemplos para decir que las relaciones ecónomicas entre pares
-pueden resultar socavadas a largo plazo, distorsionadas por los
-medios extraeconómicos de un contexto político diseñado para mantener en
-el poder a relaciones de producción orientadas al lucro.  Esta
-subversión bien puede convertirse en una política de estado y el
-resultado será la absorción completa de los Comunes así como las
+teoría y ejemplos para decir que las relaciones ecónomicas entre
+pares pueden resultar socavadas a largo plazo, distorsionadas por
+los medios extraeconómicos de un contexto político diseñado para
+mantener en el poder a relaciones de producción orientadas al lucro.
+Esta subversión bien puede convertirse en una política de estado y
+el resultado será la absorción completa de los Comunes así como las
 relaciones de pares concomitantes en el modo dominante de producción.
-Para detener esta amenaza
-
-we argue in favour of a certain working agenda for Commons-based
-communities. Such an agenda should aim the enforcement of the circulation
-of the Commons. Therefore, any useful social transformation will be
-meaningful if the people themselves decide and apply policies for their
-own benefit, optimally with the support of a sovereign partner state.
-If peer production is to become dominant, it has to control capital
-accumulation with the aim to marginalise and eventually transcend
-capitalism.  Keywords: Peer Production, Free Software, Collaboration,
-Commons, Emancipation, State Policy, Economic Theory, Partner State,
-Peer Property Acknowledgement: This essay has immensely benefited from
-two anonymous reviewers. We want also to thank Christos Giotitsas for
-his critique. Moreover, Vasilis Kostakis would like to acknowledge
-financial support received by the grants SF 014006 “Challenges to
-State Modernization in 21st Century Europe” and ETF 8571 "Web 2.0 and
-Governance: Institutional and Normative Changes and Challenges”.
-
-argumentamos a favor de una cierta agenda para las comunidades basadas
-en el Común.  Tal agenda debe tener como objetivo la aplicación de la
-circulación de los Comunes.  Por lo tanto, cualquier transformación
-social útil será significativa si es la gente misma quien decide y
-aplica políticas para su propio beneficio, óptimamente con el apoyo de
-un Estado soberano acompañante.  Si la producción de pares se vuelve
-predominante, debe controlar la acumulación de capital con el objetivo
-de marginalizar y eventualmente trascender el capitalismo.
+Para detener esta amenaza argumentamos a favor de una cierta agenda
+para las comunidades basadas en el Común.  Tal agenda debe tener
+como objetivo la aplicación de la circulación de los Comunes.  Por
+lo tanto, cualquier transformación social útil será significativa
+si es la gente misma quien decide y aplica políticas para su propio
+beneficio, óptimamente con el apoyo de un Estado soberano acompañante.
+Si la producción de pares se vuelve predominante, debe controlar la
+acumulación de capital con el objetivo de marginalizar y eventualmente
+trascender el capitalismo.
 
 ## Reconocimientos
 
@@ -78,23 +55,6 @@ institucionales y normativos".
 
 ## Introducción
 
-It has been claimed that an increasing number of people are now able
-to manage their political, social, and productive lives through
-a variety of interdependent networks enabled by the Information
-and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Castells 2000, 2003; Benkler
-2006; Bauwens 2005; Perez 2002). However, authors, such as Webster
-(2002a, 2002b), have argued against the idea of an “information
-society”. They emphasise the continuities of the current age with
-former capitalist-oriented social and economic arrangements (Schiller
-1981, 1984, 1996; Webster 2002a, 2002b). Kumar (1995, 154) maintains
-that the information explosion “has not produced a radical shift in
-the way industrial societies are organized” to conclude that “the
-imperatives of profit, power and control seem as predominant now as
-they have ever been in the history of capitalist industrialism”. In
-addition, Berry (2008, 369) postulates that scholars such as Benkler
-(2006) fail to recognise the extent to which network forms of production
-“will be co-opted into mainstream 'industrial' ways of production”.
-
 Se dice que un número creciente de personas son ahora capaces de
 administrar sus vidas políticas, sociales y productivas a través de una
 variedad de redes interdependientes habilitadas por las Tecnologías de
@@ -114,25 +74,6 @@ afirma que académicos como Benkler [-@benkler-2006] no pueden reconocer
 la extensión en que las formas de producción en red "serán cooptadas en
 las formas de producción 'industrial' hegemónicas".
 
-Through several cases of successful networked-based, collaborative
-projects such as free software or Wikipedia, we see the emergence of
-new ‘‘technological-economic feasibility spaces’’ for social practice
-(Benkler 2006, 31). These feasibility spaces include different social
-and economic arrangements, in contrast to what Kumar and Webster claim,
-where profit, power, and control do not seem as predominant as they
-have been in the history of modern capitalism. Benkler (2006) has
-argued that from this new communicational environment a new social
-productive model, i.e.,  Commons-based peer production, is emerging
-different from the industrial one. Peer production, exemplified by
-various free software (GNU, the Linux kernel, KDE) and free content
-(Wikipedia) projects, makes information sharing more important than the
-value of proprietary strategies and allows for large-scale information
-production efforts (Benkler 2006). In this context, peer production
-could be considered an early seed form stage of a new mode of production
-enabled through Internet-based coordination where decisions arise from
-the free engagement and cooperation of the people. They coalesce to
-create common value without recourse to monetary compensation as key
-motivating factor (Bauwens 2005; Orsi 2009; Kostakis 2013).
 
 A través de varios casos de éxito de proyectos colaborativos en red como
 el Software Libre o Wikipedia, vemos la emergencia de nuevos "espacios
@@ -156,21 +97,6 @@ involucramiento y cooperación libres entre las personas.  Se juntan para
 crear un valor común sin recurrir a la compensación monetaria como una
 forma clave de motivación [@bauwens-2005; @orsi-2009; @kostakis-2013].
 
-Our take is that peer production is a social advancement within
-capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of
-protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive
-social movements around Commons-oriented policy platforms. As “Commons”
-we understand the cultural and natural resources, which are held in
-common (not owned privately) and remain accessible to all members of
-a society (see Ostrom 1990; Hardt and Negri 2011; Bollier 2009). In
-this essay, our point of departure is the digital Commons (knowledge,
-software, design) since peer production was first noticed in the
-information sphere of production. We consider the “Commons” a third
-sector alongside the market and the state, which conceptualises the
-deep affinities amongst several forms of collaboration and helps
-validate their distinctive social dynamics as significant forces in
-economic and cultural production (Bollier in Laisne et al. 2010).
-
 Nuestra posición es que la producción de pares es un avance social
 dentro del capitalismo pero con varios aspectos post-capitalistas que
 necesitan protección, aplicación, estimulación y conexión con los
@@ -187,35 +113,6 @@ afinidades entre varias formas de colaboración y ayuda a validar sus
 dinámicas sociales distintivas en tanto fuerzas significativas en la
 producción económica y cultural [@bollier-2010].
 
-The term “peer production” or “peer-to-peer production” originates from
-the innovative nature of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking architecture
-that enabled the advent of the Internet.  The introduction of P2P
-architecture in the social relations of production and exchange of
-goods and services is based on the idea that every networked community,
-just like every networked node, becomes a “server” to satisfy the needs
-of other communities, as well as a “client” to satisfy its own. Peer
-production operates on a non-competitive, synergetic basis leading
-to an optimal distribution of resources (Benkler 2006; Bauwens 2005,
-2009). The traditional market approach with its pricing mechanism has
-mostly been unable to achieve such optimal allocations due to productive
-information asymmetry whereas peer production maximises the access to
-information. Contrary to the traditional economic thought, in peer
-production we become witnesses of consumer/producer dichotomy's collapse
-towards a new understanding in the form of the “multitude” (Hardt
-and Negri 2001), “prosumers” (Toffler and Toffler 2006), “produsers”
-(Bruns 2008), or “user-innovation communities” (von Hippel 2005).
-Further, it has been shown (Benkler 2002, 2006; Bauwens 2005) how peer
-production, given certain resources, optimally exploits the skills and
-abilities of the producers involving participatory ownership structures,
-participatory learning and decision-making (Fuchs 2013).  Whereas the
-firm binds by contract only a fraction of capabilities, which considers
-appropriate for realising a certain goal. In a peer production project
-the motive emerges when a full set of capabilities is accessing a given
-amount of resources. Peer production achieves the optimal allocation
-of resources being a more productive system for information than the
-market-based or the bureaucratic-state ones (Bauwens 2005; Kostakis
-2012).
-
 El término "producción de pares" o "producción P2P" se origina en la
 naturaleza innovativa de la arquitectura de redes de pares (P2P) que
 posibilitaron el advenimiento de Internet.  La introducción de la
@@ -247,22 +144,6 @@ de pares alcanza la asignación óptima de recursos al ser un sistema más
 productivo de información que los mercados o las burocracias estatales
 [@bauwens-2005; @kostakis-2012].
 
-This article begins with a brief outline
-of how the initial architecture of the Internet is being distorted
-into a client-server format as observed in proprietary social networks
-managed by the cognitive capitalists of the web. We, then, address
-and question the main arguments in relation to “the tragedy of the
-Commons” and the phenomenon of Commons-based peer production. What is
-the role of the peer produced Commons in the capitalist accumulation
-while the emancipatory potential of peer communities is neutralised
-without affecting their productive function? To answer this question,
-we discuss how the emancipatory promise of the (digital) Commons and of
-peer production can evolve into a parody bringing to the fore the case
-of free software. To tackle the threat of the Commons' full absorption
-as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer relations into the dominant
-mode of production, we conclude by arguing in favour of a certain
-working agenda for Commons-based communities.
-
 Este artículo comienza con una breve introducción a cómo la
 arquitectura inicial de Internet está siendo distorsionada en un
 formato cliente-servidor tal como es observado en las redes sociales
@@ -280,34 +161,9 @@ el avasallamiento de las relaciones de pares por el modo de producción
 dominante, concluimos argumentando a favor de una agenda para las
 comunidades basadas en los Comunes.
 
-1. From the Tragedy to the Parody of the Commons
-
 De la tragedia a la parodia de los comunes
 ------------------------------------------
 
-Benkler (2006) postulates his assumptions about the conditions for the
-development of peer production, taking for granted a general stable
-economy. He does not deal with the threats Commons-based peer production
-will face once exposed to a hostile economic environment.  An emerging
-question is why the dominant socio-economic framework would resist to
-the building of a Commons sphere. After all, one may argue, it is within
-this sphere that the Internet and many other digital technologies have
-been developing. Our position is that the aforementioned statement is
-partially true: The emergence of web technologies, and of the Internet
-itself, has taken place in a contradictory framework. The previously
-failed attempts for the adoption of ACTA/SOPA/PIPA proposals that
-seek to restrict the freedom of the individuals through a global
-enforcement of strict “intellectual property” standards; the efforts for
-a regulatory regime with an architecture of transactions in the first
-place (rather than policing the transactions afterwards) (Boyle 1997);
-the attempts for surveillance and censorship by both authoritarian and
-liberal countries; and “the growing tendency to link the Internet’s
-security problems to the very properties that made it innovative and
-revolutionary in the first place” (Mueller 2010, 160), are only some
-reasons that have made scholars, like Zittrain (2008), worry that
-digital systems may be pushed back to the model of locked-down devices
-centrally controlled information appliances.
-
 Benkler [-@benkler-2006] postula sus asunciones sobre las condiciones
 para el desarrollo de la producción de pares, dando por sentada una
 economía general estable.  No toma en cuenta las amenazas que la
@@ -334,19 +190,6 @@ expresado preocupación por que los sistemas digitales podrían retroceder
 al modelo de dispositivos bloqueados y controlados centralmente como si
 de lectrodomésticos informacionales se tratara.
 
-
-The initial P2P architecture of the Internet, based on the end-to-end
-principle, has been distorted into a client-server format where
-the server has the absolute authority over the client, who stands
-unprotected with limited intervention possibility (Kempf and Austein
-2004).  The “addiction” of the client to assign tasks, which concern
-him/her on the first place, to the supposed convenience that the server
-offers is a phenomenon observed in proprietary, centralised social
-networks and SaaS models (i.e., “Software as a Service” acronym; for
-example, think of Facebook). This exemplifies the tendency of the user
-population to neutralise and detach from issues important for their
-online and offline future.
-
 La arquitectura P2P inicial de la Internet, basada en el principio de
 extremo-a-extremo, ha sido distorsionada hacia un formato
 cliente-servidor donde el servidor tiene autoridad absoluta sobre el
@@ -361,24 +204,6 @@ importantes para su futuro en y fuera de línea.
 [^SaaS]: Acrónimo de "Software as a Service" \[Software como Servicio\],
          por ejemplo Facebook.
 
-Further, in this contradictory framework we observe nuanced changes
-not only in the institutional design concerning the Internet but also
-in the used terminology. For instance, see the shift from “free” to
-just “open source” software. The term “open source” has become related
-to ideas and arguments based only on practical values, such as having
-powerful software (Stallman 2012). As Stallman (2012) writes: “the two
-terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand
-for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a
-development methodology; free software is a social movement.” The open
-source implies that non-free software is an inferior solution to the
-practical problem at hand, whereas for the free software advocates
-non-free software “is a social problem” (Stallman 2012). “If it's
-the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you
-use?”, Stallman asks to answer, “yes, because different words convey
-different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give you
-the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends
-above all on teaching people to value freedom.”
-
 Aun más, en este marco contradictorio observamos matices no sólo en el
 diseño institucional concerniente a la Internet sino también en la
 terminología utilizada.  Por ejemplo, el giro de software "libre" a "de
@@ -398,21 +223,6 @@ libre con cualquier otro nombre te puede dar las mismas libertades hoy,
 establecer la libertad de forma duradera depende sobre todo de enseñar a
 la gente a valorar la libertad."
 
-We attempt to move from a strict techno-economic analysis towards
-a discussion of the Commons within a turbulent, contradictory
-socio-economic framework. In other words, what is the role of the
-Commons in the capitalist accumulation while the emancipatory potential
-of peer communities is neutralised without affecting their productive
-function? The capitalist system arguably seeks to incorporate
-Commons-based, peer communities because of their cost-effective
-advantage (low-cost labour with high quality products). We argue that
-the development of P2P relations in itself, if placed in the current
-socio-economic conditions, can take place only temporarily because
-in the long run it will be undermined by means designed to maintain
-profit-driven relations of production into power. We call this
-transformation process “parody of the Commons” in relation to what
-Benkler (2006) defines as “tragedy of the Commons”.
-
 Intentamos salir de un análisis estrictamente tecno-económico hacia una
 discusión de los Comunes dentro de un marco socioeconómico turbulento y
 contradictorio.  En otras palabras, ¿cuál es el rol de los Comunes en la
@@ -428,33 +238,6 @@ producción orientadas al lucro.  Llamamos a este proceso de
 transformación "parodia de los Comunes" en relación a lo que Benkler
 [-@benkler-2006] define como "tragedia de los Comunes".
 
-In 1968, Garret Hardin first introduced the concept of the tragedy of
-the Commons referring to the degradation of a finite resource used by
-a group of individuals who act independently and rationally on the
-basis of their self-interest. If individuals agreed to assign private
-management responsibility, which would implement a protection fence
-around the resource against the “rational” behaviour of all, the
-resource would be safe (Hardin 1968). Elinor Ostrom (1990) understates
-Hardin's approach claiming that if those, who share a certain resource,
-belonged to a local community, then they would adopt the optimal
-solutions to serve their interests. In certain cases the aforementioned
-statement cannot apply, because of a lack of confidence amongst
-community members due to the high communication costs and/or because
-of the small benefit from the problem solving. However, the criteria
-that Ostrom (1990) articulates are also immanent in Hardin's definition
-as a matter of the rational behaviour of individuals. Ostrom (1990)
-correctly denotes that the resource sustainability can be achieved by
-adopting best practices without the need of privatisation. What eludes
-both Hardin and Ostrom is that the best practices or the technical means
-are defined by those in power. There is arguably almost no possibility
-of implementing measures that would not enforce the established
-structure. The shared resource may not become private, but the
-extraeconomic support of other privatised means in the infrastructure of
-the common resource (e.g. friendly policies toward activities regardless
-of business plan) could gradually eradicate the resource. Once again,
-the ruling agenda defines whether the technical means can be considered
-best practice.
-
 En 1968, Garret Hardin introdujo por primera vez el concepto de la
 tragedia de los Comunes en referencia a la degradación de un recurso
 finito al ser utilizado por individuos que actúan independiente y
@@ -484,22 +267,6 @@ amistosas hacia actividades a pesar del plan de negocios) pueden llegar
 a erradicarlo gradualmente.  Una vez más, la agenda dominante define
 cuáles medios técnicos pueden ser considerados buenas prácticas.
 
-Hardin's (1968) position about salvation through privatisation has been
-claimed for forests. If forests get privatised, the manager's best
-interest would be to protect the wood from fire and the uncontrolled
-work of woodcutters. What we have here is a category error. What the
-managers protect is their fenced area rather than the forest itself. In
-front of the “sacred” ownership rights there is no legal document to
-guarantee that the area will remain a forest.  Nowadays, the destruction
-of natural environment does not occur because the environment is a
-common resource. It is arguably happening because the applied policies
-are designed to support means of production of private appropriation,
-which exploit the common resource unconditionally. To that point,
-Hardin's and Ostrom's approaches are equally unhelpful, since their
-difference is related solely to the composition of the mixture. For
-Hardin, more privatisation is required, whereas according to Ostrom it
-should be constrained.
-
 La posición de Hardin [-@hardin-1968] sobre la salvación a través de la
 privatización ha sido proclamada para los bosques.  Si los bosques son
 privatizados, el interés del administrador será proteger la madera del
@@ -516,22 +283,6 @@ Ostrom son igualmente inútiles, porque su diferencia está asociada
 solamente a la composición de la mezcla.  Para Hardin, se requiere más
 privatización, mientras que para Ostrom debe ser contenida.
 
-Benkler (2006, 378) explains that traditionally the tragedy of the
-Commons is described by (i) the absence of incentives, i.e., nobody
-invests resources in a project since no privatisation follows; (ii) the
-absence of leadership, i.e., nobody has the appropriate authority to
-guide and accomplish such a project. What Benkler says is this: Let's
-assume that Hardin's proposition is true:  Privatisation secures
-the sustainability of a resource. But how do we get there? To begin
-with, what is our incentive to assume ownership or management of a
-common resource, if we do not charge for its use? And suppose that the
-incentive has been found: Are we capable of achieving the sustainability
-goal when this capability is part of collective intelligence? The
-difficulty to meet both conditions means inadequacy of assuming
-responsibility, hence, the common resource has no future, according
-to Hardin. Benkler (2006) states that this does not apply in peer
-production: Commons-based communities manage to find their own ways.
-
 Benkler [-@benkler-2006, pp. 378] explica que la tragedia de los comunes
 es tradicionalmente descrita por (i) la ausencia de incentivos, es
 decir, nadie invierte recursos en un proyecto porque no puede ser
@@ -550,113 +301,51 @@ de acuerdo con Hardin.  Benkler [-@benkler-2006] establece que esto no
 sucede en la producción de pares:  las comunidades basadas en los
 Comunes se las arreglan para encontrar sus propias formas.
 
-However, counter-examples can be found against the cases Benkler
-brings to the fore to support his argument. For instance, see the
-software development in traditional corporate environments on projects
-released under permissive free software licenses (examples include
-the MIT license and the BSD licenses), which allow privatising code
-modifications and, thus, do not take action against patent “treachery”
-(see Peren 1999; GNU 2013; Fitzgerald 2006). In that way software misses
-its free component and its quality becomes questionable, since the
-distribution of code's changes depends on the personal stance of the
-entrepreneur who can package them up under restrictive terms. That is
-to say, the programmer or the entrepreneur can shift from a permissive
-
 No obstante, pueden encontrarse contraejemplos a los que presenta
 Benkler para apoyar su argumentación.  Por ejemplo, el desarrollo de
-software en los ambientes corporativos tradicionales cuyos proyectos son
-liberados bajo licencias permisivas (como la MIT o las BSD) que
+software en los ambientes corporativos tradicionales cuyos proyectos
+son liberados bajo licencias permisivas (como la MIT o las BSD) que
 permiten la privatización de las modificaciones del código y que por lo
 tanto no toman partido hacia la "perfidia" de las patentes [@peren-1999;
 @gnu-2013; @fitzgerald-2006].  De esta forma el software pierde su
-componente de libertad y su calidad se vuelve cuestionable, ya que la
-distribución de los cambios en el código depende de la posición personal
-de un _entrepeneur_ que los puede empaquetar bajo términos restrictivos.
-Es decir, el programador o el _entrepeneur_ pueden cambiar de una
-licencia permisiva
-
-
-license to an “end-user license agreement”. In addition, production
-shifts to the terms with which the non-free, proprietary software is
-produced.  Thereby the software community experiences higher pressure
-and the rights of the end users are eventually reduced. In other
-words, permissive free software licenses can lead to a “tragedy” or
-rather a “parody of the Commons” because of free software's allegedly
-emancipatory promise. In such a scenario maximising individual freedom
-away from society needs would have worse total consequences than would
-have resulted by applying regulation to maximise societal freedom
-instead. One might claim that code is in abundance, as an informational
-good with almost zero marginal costs; however it needs improvement and
-maintenance, i.e., labour hours. Hence, investing free labour hours
-in dead-end projects, permissive free software licenses may trigger
-a parody of the Commons, by slowing down the overall adoption pace
-of free software. By contrast the copyleft licenses (for example the
-GPL, General Public License) guarantee end users the freedoms to use,
-study, share (copy), and modify the software. Copyleft is a method of
-social production as well as a process of knowledge sharing, which
-makes a program or other work free, and requires all modified and
-extended versions of the program to be free as well (GNU 2012). Hence,
-copyleft licenses define the relations amongst the members of software
-communities and in that sense they create ecologies outside or rather
-in the interstices of the capitalist market. To ensure there is no
-misunderstanding, we need to clarify the meaning of free software. The
-“free” in free software, unlike “free” in free labour, does not mean
-gratis. Free software is defined by the four freedoms the user of that
-software has in order to use, study, share copies, and share modified
-versions of the software.
-
-a un acuerdo de usuario final (EULA en inglés).  Además, la producción
-cambia hacia los términos en los que el software no libre, propietario,
-es producido.  Por lo tanto la comunidad de software experimenta una
-mayor presión y los derechos del usuario final son eventualmente
-reducidos.  En otras palabras, las licencias permisivas pueden llevar a
-una "tragedia" antes que a una "parodia de los Comunes" por la promesa
-emancipatoria del Software Libre.  En tal escenario la maximización
-de la libertad individual contra las necesidades sociales tendría
-consecuencias totales aun peores que la aplicación de regulaciones que
-maximicen la libertad social en su lugar.  Podría decirse que el código
-abunda, en tanto bien informacional con costos marginales tendientes
-a cero; sin embargo necesita mejoras y mantenimiento, es decir, horas
-de trabajo.  Por lo tanto, al invertir horas de trabajo libres en un
-proyecto sin salida, las licencias permisivas pueden provocar una
-parodia de los Comunes, al desacelerar el paso de la adopción general
-del software libre.  En contraste las licencias copyleft (como la
-Licencia Pública General, GPL) garantizan a los usuarios finales las
-libertades de usar, estudiar, compartir (copiar) y modificar el
-software.  El copyleft es un método de producción social tanto como un
-proceso de compartición de conocimiento, que vuelve un programa o
-cualquier trabajo en libre y requiere que todas las modificaciones y
-versiones extendidas también lo sean [@gnu-2012].  De ahí que las
-licencias copyleft definan las relaciones entre los miembros de las
-comunidades de software y les permitan crear ecologías por fuera o más
-bien en los intersticios del mercado capitalista.  Para que no haya
-malentendidos, necesitamos clarificar el significado de "software
-libre".  Lo "libre" en el software libre, a diferencia de lo "libre" en
-trabajo libre, no significa gratis.  El Software Libre se define por
-cuatro libertades que el usuario tiene para usar, estudiar, compartir
-copias y compartir versiones modificadas del software.
-
-Defining the Parody of the Commons
+componente de libertad y su calidad se vuelve cuestionable, ya que
+la distribución de los cambios en el código depende de la posición
+personal de un _entrepeneur_ que los puede empaquetar bajo términos
+restrictivos.  Es decir, el programador o el _entrepeneur_ pueden
+cambiar de una licencia permisiva a un acuerdo de usuario final (EULA
+en inglés).  Además, la producción cambia hacia los términos en los
+que el software no libre, propietario, es producido.  Por lo tanto la
+comunidad de software experimenta una mayor presión y los derechos del
+usuario final son eventualmente reducidos.  En otras palabras, las
+licencias permisivas pueden llevar a una "tragedia" antes que a una
+"parodia de los Comunes" por la promesa emancipatoria del Software
+Libre.  En tal escenario la maximización de la libertad individual
+contra las necesidades sociales tendría consecuencias totales aun
+peores que la aplicación de regulaciones que maximicen la libertad
+social en su lugar.  Podría decirse que el código abunda, en tanto bien
+informacional con costos marginales tendientes a cero; sin embargo
+necesita mejoras y mantenimiento, es decir, horas de trabajo.  Por lo
+tanto, al invertir horas de trabajo libres en un proyecto sin salida,
+las licencias permisivas pueden provocar una parodia de los Comunes,
+al desacelerar el paso de la adopción general del software libre.  En
+contraste las licencias copyleft (como la Licencia Pública General, GPL)
+garantizan a los usuarios finales las libertades de usar, estudiar,
+compartir (copiar) y modificar el software.  El copyleft es un método de
+producción social tanto como un proceso de compartición de conocimiento,
+que vuelve un programa o cualquier trabajo en libre y requiere que todas
+las modificaciones y versiones extendidas también lo sean [@gnu-2012].
+De ahí que las licencias copyleft definan las relaciones entre los
+miembros de las comunidades de software y les permitan crear ecologías
+por fuera o más bien en los intersticios del mercado capitalista.  Para
+que no haya malentendidos, necesitamos clarificar el significado de
+"software libre".  Lo "libre" en el software libre, a diferencia de lo
+"libre" en trabajo libre, no significa gratis.  El Software Libre se
+define por cuatro libertades que el usuario tiene para usar, estudiar,
+compartir copias y compartir versiones modificadas del software.
 
 Definiendo la Parodia de los Comunes
 ------------------------------------
 
-We name “parody of the Commons” the introduction of privatisation in the
-management of the common resources realised either by the assignment of
-ownership to individuals or by the interference of state regulation,
-when capital is the prevailing force as well as the appropriation of the
-financial results. Both routes rely on the assumption of owning better
-information pools, which is challenged by the current developments of
-liberal-democratic societies. If Commons-based peer production does not
-become the dominant mode of production, the conditions for a tragedy
-will be arguably met and then the emancipatory promise of the Commons
-will be torn apart. It can be claimed that the state policies have to
-be considered as a parameter. We argue that the state intervention –
-when it legislates enforcing or facilitating measures – actually applies
-Hardin's schema following other routes. The state perceives as “public”
-all goods and resources of some value and then intervenes introducing
-regulations for the “common good”.
-
 Decimos que la "Parodia de los Comunes" es la introducción de la
 privatización en el manejo de los recursos comunes que se realiza ya sea
 por la asignación de la propiedad a individuos o por interferencia de la
@@ -674,19 +363,6 @@ aplica el esquema de Hardin por otras rutas.  El Estado percibe como
 "público" todos los bienes y recursos de valor e interviene
 introduciendo regulaciones por el "bien común".
 
-However, this intervention is an attack to the public sphere and
-subverts communities. If a community starts to grow, inspectors
-from above turn up to define specifications, procedures, financial
-constraints, setting the direction for the future of the common
-resource. Also they set aside the immediate interests of those who now
-must obey rules set by bodies irrelevant to the local needs. The basic
-idea originating to the bounded rationality principle is that regulation
-cannot stop the abuse and eventually the depletion of the Commons
-occurs. This approach does not adopt the position that the state is
-incapable by nature or due to its size.  The state policies are, most of
-the times, what they are because of commitments and facilitations by the
-political system to the financial sector.
-
 No obstante, esta intervención es una ataque a la esfera pública que
 subvierte las comunidades.  Si una comunidad comienza a crecer, aparecen
 inspectores desde arriba para definir especificaciones, procedimientos y
@@ -700,41 +376,6 @@ que el Estado es incapaz por naturaleza o por su tamaño.  Las políticas
 estatales son, la mayor parte del tiempo, lo que son por compromisos y
 facilidades que el sistema política hace al sector financiero.
 
-We define two main features of the parody of the Commons. The first
-feature is the institutional integration, which is the absorption of
-the proportional dividend of every individual by a mandatory private
-appropriation enforced through legislation. The applied policies cannot
-affect free software communities in large scale, but they directly
-harm other forms of Commons as much as any other type of industrial
-unit involved with the production of any material. Individuals enter
-the Commons to enjoy the participatory nature of a productive and/or
-creative endeavour carrying the belief that the involvement of other
-members alongside with theirs builds a sum that belongs to all and
-from which all benefit from. In that sum, every contributor to a
-Commons-based community expects a contributory return plus a reward for
-nonvoluntary work. The capital markets seriously challenge this belief
-by pursuing their own agenda, based on onerous and illegal, concerning
-the international law, debts that stifle the real economy. The
-central or local administrations in an attempt to fulfil financial
-obligations to creditors, apply policies that oblige a whole society
-to transfer a large part of the national income toward payments to
-creditors. Instead of re-investments for the local needs, the society
-is deprived from valuable resources and assets. The state treats
-Commons-based communities as any other business unit and applies heavy
-non-contributory taxation. Any ambitious activity is finally ceased and
-one of the first victims is the voluntary work done by the members of
-peer communities. This is not an imaginary situation; it is the reality
-in the Eurozone today, where the banking sector is allowed to have
-an unprecedented concentration of power. The link, which makes this
-situation unbearable for all, is arguably the iron fist of the common
-currency. Even Germany, the most powerful economy in the Eurozone, is
-turning slowly into recession (Indexmundi 2013; The Economist 2011)
-while most of the cities and towns there now belong to the banks rather
-than the federal state (Czuczka 2012). For the European south, there are
-many examples of structural reforms taking place that damaged equally
-the industrial and agricultural sector in the last 40 years. This is
-arguably a path to a dead-end.
-
 Definimos dos características principales en la parodia de los Comunes.
 La primera es la integración institucional, es decir la absorción del
 dividendo proporcional de cada individuo por una apropiación privada
@@ -772,33 +413,6 @@ Para el Sur europeo existen muchos ejemplos de reformas estructurales
 que dañaron tanto el sector industrial como el agrícola en los últimos
 40 años.  Esto es entonces el camino hacia un callejón sin salida.
 
-The second feature is the external outsourcing, according to which,
-regardless of the partners’ intentions and plans, the project is
-converted into a mode of crowdsourcing/aggregation economy. In
-the aforementioned scenario the peer produced use value serves
-certain for-profit interests no matter if peer producers are aware
-of it. The owners/administrators of the web platforms/network, i.e.,
-the “netarchists” such as Facebook or Google (for an overview of the
-concept see Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012) can be considered as
-the web capitalists, who renounce their dependence on information
-accumulation through intellectual property and become enablers of social
-participation (Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012). They combine open
-and closed elements in the architecture of their platforms to ensure
-a measure of profit and control by expanding the reach of neoliberal
-economy through cognitive capitalism (see Aytes 2013; Andrejevic 2013;
-Bauwens 2007, 2013; Kostakis 2012). Fuchs (2013, 219-220) notes that
-in proprietary-based platforms the productive labour is outsourced to
-users “who work completely for free and help to maximize the rate of
-exploitation [...] so that profits can be raised and new media capital
-may be accumulated. This situation is one of infinitive exploitation
-of the users”. In a similar vein, Terranova (2013, 53) addresses the
-relevance of the concept of the Commons: “as the wealth generated by
-free labour is social, so should be the mode of its return”. Hence, she
-concludes, “social networking platforms should be deprivatized – that
-is, that ownership of users’ data should be returned to their rightful
-owners as the freedom to access and modify the protocols and diagrams
-that structure their participation”.
-
 La segunda característica es la externalización, de acuerdo al cual y
 a pesar de las intenciones y planes de los miembros, el proyecto se
 convierte en una forma de economía de agregación o _crowdsourcing_.
@@ -828,22 +442,6 @@ los datos de los usuarios debe ser devuelta a sus dueños legítimos así
 como la libertad de acceder y modificar los protocolos y diagramas que
 estructuran su participación."
 
-So, free labour is voluntary. In peer production projects, the
-knowledge worker owns the final artefact (which is always open to
-further development) of the productive process and gains experience,
-knowledge, relations and/or even money (however, monetary profit is
-not the key motivating factor) through it. In states of privatisation
-(according to the aforementioned categorisation that would be
-in the crowdsourcing/aggregation economies) free labour implies
-exploitation. In addition to the social media monopolies, the
-development of Apple's MacOS X is another example of external
-outsourcing. In short, MacOS X is based on UNIX, software that begun as
-a free-shared product to later become proprietary under different brand
-names and then free again (for example, FreeBSD and NetBSD). Parts of
-the latter free software components along with the mach kernel developed
-at Carnegie Mellon University were included into NeXTSTEP operating
-system, which was finally renamed into OS X.
-
 Entonces, el trabajo gratuito es voluntario.  En los proyectos
 de producción de pares, el trabajador cognitivo es dueño del
 artefacto final (que permanece abierto a su desarrollo ulterior) del
@@ -861,29 +459,6 @@ Partes de estos últimos componentes de software libre así como el kernel
 Mach desarrollado por la Universidad Carnegie Mellon fueron incluidos en
 el sistema operativo NeXTSTEP, finalmente renombrado OS X.
 
-Hence, we argue that the Commons firstly emerge as a tragedy due to
-long-term inertia and then evolve to a farce or a parody. As soon as the
-gradual destruction is perceived (tragedy) everybody agrees to privatise
-the management and in case they do not agree, the state may force
-agreement in order to implement the assignment. The common resource
-remains common by its name only (parody). We argue that, unfortunately,
-this is a likely scenario. To put it in software terminology, this
-constitutes a security hole in the ecology of peer production, and, for
-the moment, no patch (i.e., solution) has been proposed. The question,
-therefore, is whether the peer producers will actually benefit from the
-development of P2P relations and the production of commonly produced
-use value, or whether the Commonsbased peer production phenomenon will
-just constitute a part of a neoliberal Plan B, put in Caffentzis' terms
-(2010). Supposing peer production will be progressively emerging as a
-dominant productive model upon which will rely the prosperity of the
-people (see Hardt and Negri 2011; Rigi 2012; Bauwens and Kostakis in
-press; Kostakis 2013), then the transcendence of the parody is not
-just a theoretical issue to be dealt with. It is rather a practical,
-political issue that will determine the success of the Commons-based
-communities in general.  Hence, it is necessary to approach the Commons
-concept within the ongoing socio-economic context that is blooming and
-discuss how it affects the function of the real economy.
-
 Por lo tanto, decimos que los Comunes emergen en primer lugar como una
 tragedia debido a una inercia de largo plazo para evolucionar hacia una
 farsa o parodia.  Tan pronto como esta destrucción gradual es percibida
@@ -909,31 +484,6 @@ tanto, resulta necesario abordar el concepto de los Comunes dentro de un
 contexto socioeconómico en proceso que está aflorando y discutir cómo
 afecta el funcionamiento de la economía real.
 
-While the triggering event of its burst was the failure of subprime
-mortgages, many opinions have been voiced concerning the causes
-of the 2008 financial bubble. Some of technoeconomic nature (for
-example Perez 2009a, 2009b) and others (for instance Sowell 2010;
-Krugman 2009, 2012; Stiglitz 2010), which focus more on the symptoms
-rather than on the inherent contradictory characteristics of the
-capitalist system. According to Karl Marx (1992/1885, 1993/1983), the
-general pattern of the capitalist system, which makes economic crises
-inevitable, is created by the combined action of two laws of capitalist
-integration. The first law concerns the tendency of profit's quota to
-decrease whereas the second law describes the need for an increasing
-capital concentration and accumulation. These two laws contradict each
-other leading the system to collapses and crises: Capital cannot be
-invested when the declining rate of profit's quota is faster than the
-increasing rate of capital accumulation. In Marx's analysis, capitalism
-is inherently built on a Sisyphean logic reaching always a dead-end in
-which the escapable policy often concerns the partial destruction of the
-total capital. For a certain period of time, capitalism –a process of
-“creative destruction”, to remember Schumpeter (1975/1942, 1982/1939)
-who shares many views with Marx in the analysis of the capitalist
-dynamics– may seem sustainable, introducing innovative products and
-services. Williamson (1995, 1998), also, from a different perspective
-reaches a similar conclusion: Every firm will stop developing once its
-organisational costs surpass the organisational costs of a smaller firm.
-
 Mientras que el evento disparador de su explosión fue la falla de las
 hipotecas _subprime_, muchas opiniones se han alzado sobre las causas
 de la burbuja financiera del 2008.  Alguna de naturaleza tecnoeconómica
@@ -962,27 +512,6 @@ y servicios innovativos.  Desde una perspectiva diferente, Williamson
 cada compañía dejará de desarrollarse cuando sus costos organizacionales
 superan los costos organizacionales de una compañía menor.
 
-The partial transformation of the stagnant capital into loan capital is
-used as a pressure valve for overcoming the dead-end (Marx 1992/1885;
-Harvey 2007, 2010; Lapavitsas 2012).  The overflow of loan capital with
-compound interest into international markets along with the shift of
-policy decision-making from democratically elected state governments
-to the banking sector firms and institutions preserves a global debt
-crisis. Once the loanable capital secures its dominant position in the
-market, the debt crisis becomes permanent and is reinforced regardless
-of the progress in the annual economic indices. Even a prosperous
-economy will start declining in the course of time if the annual surplus
-is being used to serve external debts. Serving the external debt does
-not necessarily mean that the debt is reduced, it may as well increase
-if the interest is accumulated into capital, thus neutralising not only
-the benefit of the local producers, but also any advantage on innovation
-achieved by their talent and effort. This situation occurs when the
-creditor and the debtor sign an unbalanced agreement, the interest rates
-and spreads are unfairly high and there is no flexibility in monetary
-policy. In that case, and especially in bankrupting economies, the
-individuals who participate in Commons-oriented communities may fall
-into the trap of a parody of the Commons.
-
 La transformación parcial del capital estancado en el capital de
 préstamo es utilizada como una válvula de presión para superar este
 callejón sin salida [@marx-1992; @harvey-2007; @harvey-2010;
@@ -1007,24 +536,6 @@ las economías en bancarrota, los individuos que participan en
 comunidades orientadas a los Comunes pueden caer en la trampa de la
 parodia de los Comunes.
 
-The peer producer participates to satisfy his/her inner positive
-motives, interests and needs (for instance, the need to create, learn,
-communicate and share) on a voluntary basis (Benkler 2006; Hertel,
-Niedner and Herrmann 2003; Lakhani and Wolf 2005). As Hertel, Niedner
-and Herrmann (2003, 1174) point out, the Linux kernel community
-participants are driven “by similar motives as voluntary action within
-social movements such as the civil rights movement, the labour movement,
-or the peace movement”. On the other hand, the peer producer has no
-idea that his/her voluntary inputs contribute to the retention of the
-average profit quota's decrease, offering the chance to capital to
-develop, appropriate, expand and grow.  Therefore, we argue that those
-who have a competitive advantage over the P2P relations of production
-will benefit from the appropriation of the commonly peer produced use
-value. The aforementioned is a typical case of the transformation of the
-tragedy into parody, once the lack of authority, observed in several
-Commons-based peer projects, gives the chance to extra-economic means to
-take advantage of creative communities' inertia.
-
 El par productor participa para satisfacer sus motivos, intereses y
 necesidades positivos (por ejemplo, la necesidad de crear, aprender,
 comunicarse y compartir) voluntariamente [@benkler-2006; @hertel-2003;
@@ -1045,30 +556,9 @@ ciertos proyectos de pares basados en los Comunes da una oportunidad a
 medios extraeconómicos de tomar ventaja de la inercia de las comunidades
 creativas.
 
-The Parody of Free Software?
-
 ¿La parodia del Software Libre?
 -------------------------------
 
-For the economic system the accumulation of means of production is
-both a functional necessity and cause for deadlock. In the area of
-information sciences, computers and other digital devices, the technical
-capacity of using all those devices as means of production is at the
-hands of the majority. The private property in the means of production
-at this economic sector for the first time is universal and the amount
-of means that people own decisively influences their potential. Today,
-free software, due to its technical excellence, is being widely used
-by organisations that compete against the philosophy and practice of
-peer communities. One of the causes is the division of the developers'
-community to those who use the term “free software”, thus, contributing
-to an increasing power of software communities and to those who prefer
-constructs like “open source” or “shared source” arguing in favour of
-the ease of free software penetration into the world of business. The
-latter removed from all users, individuals or legal entities, the
-ability to understand that their political freedom that depends on
-the use of digital media is far more important than the technical
-superiority of the free software that enables those media.
-
 Para el sistema económico la acumulación de los medios de producción
 es una necesidad funcional tanto como una causa para alcanzar un punto
 muerto.  En el área de las ciencias informacionales, las computadoras
@@ -1090,20 +580,6 @@ jurídicos, de la habilidad de comprender que su libertad política
 depende de la utilización de medios digitales es mucho más importante
 que la superioridad técnica del software libre que habilita esos medios.
 
-The majority of the people cannot be aware of all these, when free
-software is not a corner stone of the public education system. This
-shortcoming severely damages society or part of it in the face of
-urgent social issues. Even the application of wide consent policies
-is doomed to fail if the technical infrastructure does not deal with
-immediate social problems.  One may observe two heavy consequences
-of the community division. The approaches closer to “open source”
-are anti-pedagogical due to their axiological neutrality, thereby
-cannot get promoted as educational material, while friction with free
-software does not offer teachers a clear direction. Then society,
-due to absence of guidance, is moving conceptually to what people
-intuitively understand. That software technology is more technology and
-less software, hence, a business for specialised engineers.
-
 La mayoría de la gente no puede estar al tanto de todo esto, cuando el
 software libre no es la piedra angular del sistema de educación pública.
 Este defecto daña severamente a la sociedad en todo o en parte con
@@ -1120,15 +596,6 @@ la gente comprende intuitivamente.  Es decir que la tecnología es más
 tecnología y menos software, por lo tanto materia de ingenieros
 especializados.
 
-When the new technology of typography was invented, its high cost kept
-the majority at a distance from these new means of production. In our
-days, when the excuse of keeping a distance from digital media is not
-an option, the misinformation, even by official sources, regarding the
-dynamics of software has become epidemic. In that way, it prevents
-people from finding out how to use computers for their own benefit,
-instead forcing them to assign even the simplest task to computer
-experts.
-
 Cuando la nueva tecnología tipográfica fue inventada, su alto costo
 mantuvo a la mayoría a la distancia de estos nuevos medios de
 producción.  En nuestros días, cuando la excusa de mantener distancia de
@@ -1138,20 +605,6 @@ esta forma, previene que la gente encuentre la manera de utilizar las
 computadoras para su propio beneficio y en cambio los fuerza a asignar
 la más simple tarea a expertos informáticos.
 
-The network, i.e., a sum of networked nodes, is actually the “real
-computer” since coherence and economies of scale are both possible in
-the network. The traditional state policies that give way to monopoly
-power cannot easily apply here. The advocates of P2P architecture
-are struggling against a coordinated international effort to control
-the power of peer nodes before the majority realises the width of
-opportunities it offers. The chosen policy to subvert Commons-based
-communities is on one hand the pressure for signing international
-agreements against the freedom of Internet, which is a typical operation
-of institutional integration, and on the other the binding of users
-to monopoly corporations. Those corporations charge for pre-installed
-proprietary technologies that come with any newly purchased device and
-deprive all from basic freedoms in exchange of a presumed ease of use.
-
 La red, es decir la suma de los nodos interconectados, es en realidad
 la "computadora real" ya que tanto la coherencia como las economías de
 escala se vuelven posibles en la red.  Las políticas estatales que
@@ -1168,17 +621,6 @@ corporaciones cobran por las tecnologías privativas pre-instaladas en
 los dispositivos nuevos y privan a todos las libertades básicas a cambio
 de una presunta facilidad de uso.
 
-Although the “golden cage” is a syndrome that cannot last forever,
-companies that develop non-free software may estimate that one way
-or another it will be a source of income driven by the power of
-inertia. Proprietary technologies in operating systems and software
-applications have two major consequences. They keep the users divided
-and helpless (Stallman 2008), deconstruct local cultures (Greve 2006a,
-2006b) and increase digital illiteracy. This is a good example of
-external outsourcing, which holds a more or less important role, however
-the institutional integration appears to be the most appropriate way of
-undermining the Commons.
-
 Aunque la "jaula dorada" es un síndrome que no puede durar para siempre,
 las compañías que desarrollan software no libre estiman que de una forma
 u otra tendrán una fuente de ingresos gracias al poder de la inercia.
@@ -1190,20 +632,9 @@ Este es un buen ejemplo de externalización que tiene un rol más o menos
 importante aunque la integración institucional aparece como la forma más
 apropiada de debilitar los Comunes.
 
-Overcoming the Tensions
-
 Superando las tensiones
 -----------------------
 
-In times when the global economy is relatively stable, the parody of
-the Commons can be easily avoided. There is insignificant migration
-of labour power from the corporate model towards the Commons, hence
-no serious pressure to apply institutional integration and the
-mobility of community members practically cancels the consequence of
-crowdsourcing. But in an era of economic collapse and while mobility
-becomes a risk, gradually more people direct their attention to
-communities, with many of them doing so for survival purposes.
-
 En tiempos en los que la economía global es relativamente estable, la
 parodia de los Comunes puede ser fácilmente evitada.  Existe una
 insignificamente migración de fuerza de trabajo desde el modelo
@@ -1214,19 +645,6 @@ Pero en una época de colapso económico y mientras que la movilidad se
 vuelve un riesgo, cada vez más personas dirigen su atención a las
 comunidades, muchos de ellos por supervivencia.
 
-The state seems to face Commons-based peer communities as ordinary
-economic units subject to heavy taxation while supports “intellectual
-property”-based activities. Those activities are injected into
-communities blocking their growth. The hope that the multiplicity of
-communities will help them rise into dominant relations of production
-is refuted since the political system will allow communities to grow
-only if their operations and functions become integrated to the
-established mode of production. History shows that the capitalist
-mode of production allowed no other form of production. The future
-of pre-capitalist or novel produc- tion modes was predetermined:
-destruction or integration. While P2P relations are not dominant, their
-dependence on a friendly economic environment becomes imperative.
-
 El Estado parece afrontar las comunidades de pares basadas en los
 Comunes como unidades económicas ordinarias sujetas a grandes tasas
 impositivas mientras que soporta actividades basadas en la "propiedad
@@ -1242,34 +660,6 @@ predeterminado: destrucción o integración.  Mientras que las relaciones
 de pares no sean dominantes, su dependencia de un medioambiente
 económico amistoso resulta imperativo.
 
-A recent example where a Commons might be commodified is the case
-of ERT's digital archive. ERT was the Greek state television and
-radio network. It was a constituent of the public sector and had
-been funded through a mandatory tax implemented into the bill of
-the public electricity enterprise (DEI) for decades. In December
-2007, the launch of the effort to digitise the old ERT archives was
-announced, which first delivered results a few months later. Although
-initially this endeavour was considered an important step for the
-public availability of a unique cultural wealth, the decision to
-be distributed in that specific way was met with the opposition of
-several Commons-oriented communities and civilians. According to the
-protesters, behind this initiative lies an “innocent fraud”: The digital
-archive remained in the exclusive ownership of ERT. Patented file
-types and video, text and picture formats were selected to implement
-the digitisation while download and further use of the material was
-forbidden. Further, in the current event of ERT's dissolution as a
-consequence of the Greek crisis, (at the time of this writing, August
-2013, the fate of ERT's archive is still unknown) this national cultural
-aggregation, created and funded by the Greek citizens, may revert to
-private ownership. Already during the summer absence of a public Greek
-network, private stations broadcasted parts of the archive. The ERT
-case highlights the traditional concept for state ownership of public
-goods: The state manages a resource on behalf of the civilians over
-which they have no authority. And in turbulent times the exploitation of
-the Commons, as part of “shock doctrine” policies (see Klein 2008), more
-easily takes place contributing to and catalysing the process of capital
-accumulation.
-
 Un ejemplo reciente donde los Comunes pueden mercantilizarse es el caso
 del archivo digital de la ERT.  La ERT fue la radio y televisión estatal
 griega.  Fue constituyente del sector público y era financiada a través
@@ -1301,22 +691,6 @@ proceso de la acumulación de capital.
 [ert]: Al momento de escribir esto (agosto de 2013) el destino de la
        ERT todavía es desconocido.
 
-An effective treatment is arguably the use of means that guarantee the
-smooth growth of communities. Structurally, a measure is the adoption
-by society of the five maturity conditions to enter the Commons: open
-standards, free software, P2P architecture, advanced learning system
-and communities. As far as the political context is concerned, the
-parliamentary democracy, for instance in Greece, is trying hard to
-secure the current status quo by demolishing various citizens' rights
-and occasionally violating constitution. One should not rest his/her
-hopes on the political party system and the associated policies mainly
-due to three characteristics inherent to political party policies: i)
-restrictions on democracy is a policy to overcome economic crisis; ii)
-supranational centralism in deciding and applying fiscal and monetary
-policies serves the vision of a United Europe; iii) in a long period of
-depression, increased capital borrowing is the best method to return to
-growth.
-
 Un tratamiento efectivo es el uso de medios que garanticen el
 crecimiento fluido de las comunidades.  Estructuralmente hablando, una
 medida es la adopción por la sociedad de cinco condiciones de madurez
@@ -1334,42 +708,19 @@ monetarias sirve a la visión de una Europa Unida; iii) en un período de
 depresión largo, el incremento de la toma de préstamos de capital es el
 mejor método para recuperar el crecimiento.
 
-This set of characteristics makes this intentional absurdity evident in
-the behaviour of political parties, for which the probability to adopt
-P2P practices is practically zero, since this perspective requires
-immediate implementation of P2P infrastructures, something which is
-in contrast with the notion of “property” as it is embedded in the
-philosophy of the political system. How is it possible for a political
-system that defends the constitutional interpretation of “property”, to
-take the lead in confiscating private properties? One possible answer is
-that while the political system simply declares itself as an adherent
-of property, it only defends a particular monopolising trend, a form of
-impersonal appropriation against the real individuals.
-
-Esta serie de características hace evidente este absurdo intencional en
-el comportamiento de los partidos políticos, para los que la
-probabilidad de adoptar prácticas de pares es prácticamente cero, ya que
-esta perspectiva requiere la implementación inmediata de
+Esta serie de características hace evidente este absurdo intencional
+en el comportamiento de los partidos políticos, para los que la
+probabilidad de adoptar prácticas de pares es prácticamente cero,
+ya que esta perspectiva requiere la implementación inmediata de
 infraestructuras de pares, lo que contrasta con la noción de "propiedad"
-tal como está imbuida en la filosofía del sistema político.  ¿Cómo es
-posible que un sistema política que defiende la interpretación
+tal como está imbuida en la filosofía del sistema político.  ¿Cómo
+es posible que un sistema política que defiende la interpretación
 institucional de "propiedad" tome las riendas de la expropiación de la
 propiedad privada?  Una respuesta posible es que mientras el sistema
 político se declara adherente de la propiedad, sólo defiende una
 tendencia monopolizante particular, una forma de apropiación impersonal
 en contra de los individuos reales.
 
-When Jean Monnet (1976) declared “nous ne coalisons pas des Etats,
-nous unissons des hommes” (“we are not building a coalition of states;
-we are creating a union of peoples”), his wish came along with the
-deconstruction of the national state, conceptually prepared in various
-publications. The philosophical background of that approach was clearly
-Manichaeistic since the bipolar schema national-supranational is
-interpreted on the basis of a theocracy that proclaims a dualism of
-absolute extremes. Only a few scholars, Victor Hugo one of them,
-attempted to transcend the anti-dialectic heritage of the discourse
-around the “ideal of a unified Europe” (Swedberg 1994).
-
 Cuando Jean Monnet [-@monnet-1976] declaró "_nous ne coalisons pas des
 Etats, nous unissons des hommes_" ("no estamos construyendo una
 coalición de Estados; estamos creando una unión de personas") su deseo
@@ -1382,20 +733,6 @@ académicos, Víctor Hugo uno de ellos, intentaron trascender la herencia
 anti-dialéctica del discurso del "ideal de la Europa unificada"
 [@swedberg-1994].
 
-The answer to the problem should be a type of democracy capable
-to emerge from the activity of Commons-based communities and the
-interactions among them. A political project at both national and
-international level is required to release the healthy forces that
-demand the construction of communities for the benefit of their
-members. Given the estimated lengthy time period of the economic crisis
-as well as its structural peculiarity, which is a combination of
-monetary inflexibility and debt accumulation regardless the possible
-reduction of deficit, the parody of the Commons can be eliminated only
-if communities adhere to their mission: To ensure a high maturity level
-and make their requests for a Commons infrastructure a government policy
-towards a “partner state”, i.e., democratically-run, civic institutions
-that protect the common good (see Bauwens 2012; Kostakis 2012).
-
 La respuesta a este problema sería un tipo de democracia capaz de
 emerger de la actividad de las comunidades basadas en los Comunes y las
 interacciones entre ellas.  Un proyecto político a niveles tanto
@@ -1411,27 +748,6 @@ de gobierno tendientes al "Estado asociado", es decir a instituciones
 cívicas democráticas que protejan el bien común [@bauwens-2012;
 @kostakis-2012].
 
-This high maturity level could be achieved through the establishment
-of a democratic legal jurisdiction, which would impose restrictions on
-the exploitation of the Commons (Kleiner 2010; Fuchs 2013; Bauwens and
-Kostakis in press). Peer production might be collectively sustainable
-but it is not individually:  Most of the peer contributors cannot
-make a living and they are dependent on wages from the capitalist
-market. We side with Bauwens and Kostakis (in press) who suggest “the
-creation of Commons-friendly, ethical enterprises, consisting of the
-commoners themselves, who also control their own governance and have
-ownership. Such enterprises would be legally structured so that theirs
-is an obligation to support the circulation of the Commons”. The
-development of the Peer Production Licenses, introduced by Kleiner
-(2010) as a copyfarleft type license, could be part of the debate. These
-licenses could be oriented towards a plural form of ownership, which
-would include “maker ownership (i.e. a revisiting of worker ownership
-for the P2P age), combined with user ownership, i.e., a recognition
-that users of networks co-create value; and eventually a return for the
-ethical funders that support the enterprise” (Bauwens and Kostakis in
-press). In that way profit making is allowed, but profit-maximisation
-would not be the driving force of economic development.
-
 Este alto nivel de madurez puede ser alcanzado a través del
 establecimiento de una jurisdicción legal democrática, que imponga
 restricciones a la explotación de los Comunes [@kleiner-2010;
@@ -1457,17 +773,6 @@ económico.
 
 [ppl]: [Ver la licencia de Producción de Pares](http://endefensadelsl.org/ppl_deed_es.html)
 
-Against the capital accumulation,
-which leads to the parody of the Commons-based communities' political
-struggle should include the creation of an infrastructure that protects,
-enables and catalyses the circulation of the Commons. In that way peer
-production i) could become sustainable on the personal level as well;
-ii) expand more easily to the manufacturing of tangible products building
-on its conjunction with the emerging desktop manufacturing technological
-capabilities (see Kostakis 2013); iii) and, thus, protect itself against
-capital accumulation with the aim to marginalise, control and eventually
-transcend capitalism.
-
 Contra la acumulación de capital, que lleva a la parodia de los Comunes,
 la lucha de las comunidades debe incluir la creación de una
 infraestructura que proteja, habilite y catalice la circulación de los
@@ -1481,28 +786,6 @@ eventualmente trascender al capitalismo.
 Conclusión
 ----------
 
-We defined two main features of the parody of the Commons: the
-institutional integration and the external outsourcing, according to
-which the Commons-based peer production is converted into a mode of
-crowdsourcing. In these conditions, we described how the Commons emerge
-as a promise, then a tragedy and evolve into a parody. As soon as the
-gradual destruction is perceived (tragedy) the management of the commons
-resource is privatised: The common resource remains common by its name
-only (parody). We argue that this is a likely scenario, particularly
-damaging communities devoted to the production of tangible goods, in
-the absence of free hardware and open specifications. Since information
-sources as well as ICT are uniformly distributed, we claimed that the
-best management is one applied by groups of conscious individuals
-without orders from above. This should take place away from the
-traditional perception of the market, which, despite its imperfections,
-secured its place in a distant past, when the technology level could
-not possibly support analogous claims. Subdivision of communities
-into groups organised by a particular information-based competitive
-advantage or preferential access and control delegation to the most
-powerful parts cannot be possible if Commons-based communities follow
-their principles. The opening of a path to such a perspective depends on
-whether the majority decides to take creative control of their future.
-
 Definimos dos características principales de la parodia de los Comunes:
 la integración institucional y la externalización, de acuerdo a las
 cuales la producción de pares basada en los Comunes resulta convertida
@@ -1531,13 +814,3 @@ decide tomar el control creativo de su futuro.
 Bibliografía
 ------------
 
-
-About the Authors Vasilis Kostakis is a political economist and
-founder of the P2P Lab. Currently he is serving as a research fellow
-at Tallinn University of Technology as well as at P2P Foundation.
-Stelios Stavroulakis is a computer scientist and software engineer
-interested in distributed information systems with a particular focus
-on free software and open standards and a general awareness of social
-and environmental issues. He is a collaborator of P2P Lab.
-
-