Some time ago, on one of my travels, I had the opportunity to visit the French city of Brest (Bretagne) and discover the innovative work of the city authorities with their Democratie Locale section under particular impulse of Michel Briand, but supported by many participants from civil society.

Brittany has hundreds of miles of old smuggling paths which are becoming a tourist attraction. The city authorities, in one example of support for the social production of value, are providing to civil society, hardware, software, training modules, etc.. which people can use to produce cultural enrichment activities, for example, giving historical and natural context to the smuggling paths. This information can then be produced and used on the web, but also eventually through multimedia access points which will be accessible on the paths.

This is neither direct production by the state, nor privatisation or outsourcing to a corporation, but the direct stimulation of social production, as a third mode of production and governance. So, in this particular instance, the state is playing a role a meta-regulator, and no longer automatically favouring either itself or commercial interests.

This is one of the answers to the partial disconnect between the fact that social production is creating more and more value, but there are not enough mechanisms to make such efforts more sustainable on a individual and collective level. Both state and private entities are increasingly profiting from social innovation, but what are the mechanisms to recognize such positive externalizations from peer production? So it is entirely legitimate I believe, that the peer to peer movements start asking for such mechanisms, as institutional underpinnings of peer production.

In the same context, a UK report from Ofcom has called for a new form of public support mechanisms for distributed production, namely Public Service Publishers.

We are republishing the reaction of the Open Knowledge Foundation, which critically supports this concept:

The Response from the Open Knowledge Foundation:

The founding of a Public Service Publisher (PSP) is an opportunity to make a significant ongoing investment in the vast landscape of public, ‘open knowledge’ infrastructures already developing on the Net.

We, the undersigned, feel that the PSP could play a vital role in addressing the strategic concerns of the Net as a global and national infrastructure; exploring and protecting the educational, commercial and societal possibilities of what ‘public service’ might mean in this new context.

We are greatly encouraged by the direction expressed by OfCom’s “new approach to public service content in the digital media age.” Our response aims to steer the development of this project in the direction our combined experience and practice suggests would be of most value to the UK public.

Firstly, we commend the suggested investment in open content and open data. In particular we urge that, where the PSP funds the generation of new content, such content should always be made available under a license such that others are free to enjoy, redistribute and, most importantly, reuse and refashion that content.

Secondly, we ask that OfCom pay special attention to the ability of the PSP to invest in architectures of participation, both by supporting the development of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Open Content technologies and projects and by investing in the creation of content to encourage the growth of networks around these technologies.

Thirdly, we ask that OfCom recognise the transnational nature of the networked communications environment, and refrain from sanctioning measures designed to limit the benefits derived from the PSP to UK residents alone. The PSP and the projects and content it funds should be viewed as nodes on a global network. It should be assumed that the exchange of information and content across such a global network will be to the net benefit of the UK public.

The success of an endeavour like the PSP will rely upon these details of its founding principles, and we urge OfCom to pay significant attention to those details now. For example, the PSP may commission a website for people to post and discuss short films, investing in the “architectures of participation” suggested above. But unless the use of Free/Open Source software is specified, and the resulting website platform is ‘open’, allowing re-use and modification by other interested parties, the PSP will not be fully meeting its public service remit. Similarly, The PSP might commission a set of short films to be placed on the website, to seed its growth as a network. But unless the PSP commission explicitly requires that the resulting work be ‘open’ so that others are free to use, reuse and redistribute the work, the PSP’s audience will remain ‘consumers’ of content, and the PSP will have failed to maximise the opportunities of the digital age.

Finally, the PSP should engage in advocacy and educational initiatives to enable people, organisations and companies to publish their material using open licenses, formats and technologies. It is our sincere hope that the PSP can become a strong, public voice in favour of open knowledge structures.

Find more context in our P2P Policy Concepts pages at
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Policy