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Open Data Commons in the age of AI and Big Data

Recap from CPDP.ai, 2024

Picture of 3 people seated on a black table, one of whom is talking. On the corner is a digital screenshot showing two more faces, of participants who joined online.

On May 22, 2024, the Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS convened a panel at CPDP.ai.  The panel brought together researchers and experts of digital commons to try and answer the question at the heart of the conference – to govern AI or to be governed by AI?

The panel was moderated by Alexandra Giannopoulou (Digital Freedom Fund). Invited panelists were Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (Centre Internet et Société, CNRS), Renata Avila (Open Knowledge Foundation), Yaniv Benhamou (University of Geneva) and Ramya Chandrasekhar (Centre Internet et Société, CNRS).

The common(s) thread running across all our interventions was that AI is bring forth new types of capture, appropriation and enclosure of data that limits the realisation of its collective societal value. AI development entails new forms of data generation as well as large-scale re-use of publicly available data for training, fine-tuning and evaluating AI models. In her introduction, Alexanda referred to the MegaFace dataset – dataset created by a consortium of research institutions and commercial companies containing 3 million CC-licensed photographs sourced from Flickr. This dataset was subsequently used to train facial-recognition AI systems. She referred to how this type of re-use illustrates the new challenges for the open movement – how to encourage open sharing of data and content, while protecting privacy, artists’ rights and while preventing data extractivism.

There are also new actors in the AI supply chain, as well as new configurations between state and market actors. Non-profit actors like OpenAI are leading the charge in consuming large amounts of planetary resources as well as entrenching more data extractivism in the pursuit of different types of GenAI applications. In this context, Ramya spoke about the role of the state in the agenda for more commons-based governance of data. She noted that the state is no longer just a sanctioning authority, but also a curator of data (such as open government data which is used for training AI systems), as well as a consumer of these systems themselves. EU regulation needs to engage more with this multi-faceted role of the state.

Originally, the commons had promise of preventing capture and enclosure of shared resources by the state and by the market. The theory of the commons was applied to free software, public sector information, and creative works to encourage shared management of these resoruces.

But now, we also need to rethink how to make the commons relevant to data governance in the age of Big Data and AI. Data is most definitely a shared resource, but the ways in which value is being extracted out of data and the actors who share this value is determined by new constellations of power between the state and market actors.

Against this background, Yaniv and Melanie spoke about the role that licenses can continue to play in instilling certain values to data sharing and re-use, as well as serving as legal mechanisms for protecting privacy and intellectual property of individuals and communities in data. They presented their Open Data Commons license template. This license expands original open data licenses, to include contractual provisions relating to copyright and privacy. The license contemplates four mandatory elements (that serve as value signals):

  • Share-alike pledge (to ensure circularity of data in the commons)
  • Privacy pledge (to respect legal obligations for privacy at each downstream use),
  • Right to erasure  (to enable individuals to exercise this right at every downstream use).
  • Sustainability pledge (to ensure that downstream re-uses undertake assessments of the ecological impact of their proposed data-reuse).

The license then contemplates new modular elements that each licensor can choose from – including the right to make derivatives, the right to limit use to an identified set of re-users, and the right to charge a fee for re-use where the fee is used to maintain the licensor’s data sharing infrastructure. They also discussed the need for trusted intermediaries like data trusts (drawing inspiration from Copyright Management Organisations) to steward data of multiple individuals/communities, and manage the Open Data Commons licenses.

Finally, Renata offered some useful suggestions from the perspective of civil society organisations. She spoke about the Open Data Commons license as a tool for empowering individuals and communities to share more data, but be able to exercise more control over how this data is used and for whose benefit. This license can enable the individuals and communities who are the data generators for developing AI systems to have more say in receiving the benefits of these AI systems. She also spoke about the need to think about technical interoperability and community-driven data standards. This is necessary to ensure that big players who have more economic and computational resources do not exercise disproportionate control over accessing and re-using data for development of AI, and that other smaller as well as community-based actors can also develop and deploy their own AI systems.

All panelists spoke about the urgent need to not just conceive of, but also implement viable solutions for community-based data governance that balances privacy and artists’ rights with innovation for collective benefit. The Open Data Commons license presents one such solution, which the Open Knowledge Foundation proposes to develop and disseminate further, to encourage its uptake. There is significant promise in initiatives like the Open Data Commons license to ensure inclusive data governance and sustainability. It’s now the time for action – to implement such initiatives, and work together as a community in realising the promises of data commons.

Author

Ramya Chandrasekhar | Legal Researcher
Ramya Chandrasekhar | Legal Researcher (CIS-ODECO)

Participants

Alexandra Giannopoulou | Digital Freedom Fund
Yaniv Benhamou | University of Geneva
Ramya Chandrasekhar | Legal Researcher
Ramya Chandrasekhar | Centre Internet et Société (ODECO)
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay | Centre Internet et Société
Renata Avila | Open Knowledge Foundation

Funding Acknowledgement

Takeaways from the DCPC/CIS Policy Lab, May 2024

Fostering Public Support for Digital Commons

The Digital Commons Policy Council (DCPC) conducts scientific research to increase recognition for the digital commons and the voluntary work that creates these common goods. The DCPC is an informal think tank which was founded in 2021 at the University of Canberra, and builds on the earlier work of the Journal of Peer Production. The DCPC produces public reports based on empirical data, submissions to lawmakers, educational resources for schools, and scientific articles.

In 2022 the Société des Communs held two Policy Labs bringing together digital commons project representatives and members of government entities. Building on this work, the DCPC-CIS 2024 Policy Lab was held in Paris on May 30 and 31, in partnership with the Centre Internet et Société (CIS) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). The Policy Lab was organised by Mathieu O’Neil, University of Canberra, with support from the Digital Infrastructure Insight Fund’s Katharina Meyer and from CIS Director Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay. The event was facilitated by O’Neil, and held thanks to the financial support of the Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program and the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund.

The event brought together thirty digital commons experts from Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK. They included representatives from digital commons communities, e.g., Civic Data Coop Liverpool, Framasoft, La Coop des Communs, Open Food Facts, Wikimedia France; from public organisations, e.g., Agence Nationale de la Cohésion des Territoires (ANCT), Direction Interministérielle du Numérique (DINUM), Sovereign Tech Fund; from civil society organisations, e.g., Collectif pour une Société des Communs, Inno3, Open Forum Europe, Open Future, Open Knowledge Foundation; and from academia, e.g., Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Fondazione Bruno Kessler – Digital Commons Lab, University of Dundee, Université Paris 8, Université de Technologie de Compiègne. Ramya Chandrasekhar represented ODECO in this workshop. It was a chance for participants to share experiences, present their work, and discuss long-term challenges and opportunities. New connections were made, and new plans were hatched.

The main purpose of the DCPC-CIS 2024 Policy Lab was to identify best practices and opportunities in the public institutions-digital commons communities space, and to develop tools for increasing their cooperation. Participants identified problems and solutions on Day 1, and sorted themselves into groups on Day 2 to collaboratively develop three resources.

  1. Public Support Best Practices Guide: The first group is identifying and documenting successful public support mechanisms in different countries that could be replicated elsewhere. Categories include government-led commons initiatives during emergencies (e.g., Italy’s open-source Covid contact-tracing app), academic-government collaboration projects (e.g., UK’s Data Trusts project), and public funding opportunities (e.g., France’s Call for commons or Appels à communs). This group is led by Angela Daly, University of Dundee, and Riccardo Nanni, Fondazione Bruno Kessler – Digital Commons Lab. Ramya Chandrasekhar and Melanie Dulong de Rosnay are contributors.
  2. Policy Proposals Mapping: The second group is mapping existing policy proposals to support the digital commons, starting with recommendations from participating entities and other key proposals. The goal is to create a list on Wikipedia for policymakers and advocates to access easily. Participants working on conversion into Wikidata reported that this was doable, if time-consuming. List variables include “addressee” (e.g., Local, National, Transnational), “policy instrument” (e.g., Nodality, Authority, Treasure, Organisation) and “approach to digital commons” (e.g., holistic, or specific: open source; open science; open hardware; open knowledge; open infrastructure; data commons). This group is led by Tom Fredrik Blenning of Electronic Frontier Norway, Valérian Guillier of the CIS-CNRS, and Jan Krewer from Open Future.
  3. Public Procurement Guide: The third group is creating a guide on public procurement issues for digital commons. This guide will compile policy proposals, legal procedures, and practical solutions to better integrate digital commons into public procurement processes. The group leaders are Célya Gruson Daniel from Inno3, Bastien Guerry from the French Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM), and Sébastien Schulz from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. They plan to add more information to the guide through a hackathon organised by DINUM in Paris in the second half of 2024.

The DCPC will incorporate key findings from the Policy Lab in a forthcoming activity report. In addition, two easy-to-read DCPC Handbooks on Public Support Best Practice and on Procurement will be co-developed with group leads and released in several languages.

During a final debrief session Policy Lab participants reviewed how the event was organised, with debates informing future editions. Indeed, all present agreed that the Policy Lab was a useful event which should happen again. DCPC therefore plans to facilitate a follow-up event in September / October 2025, possibly in the UK, to continue bringing together researchers and practitioners working on the digital commons, and to develop new opportunities for collaboration. This will also provide an opportunity to incorporate more perspectives from the Global South and from indigenous communities (eg., Canada, NZ).

CIS will continue to be involved in future editions of the Policy Lab, to foster more research and public engagement on the digital and data commons.

[Cross-posted from https://dcpc.info/lab24/]

Participants from CIS:

Valérian Guillier
Valérian Guillier | Postdoctoral researcher (NGI Commons)
Ramya Chandrasekhar | Legal Researcher
Ramya Chandrasekhar | Legal Researcher (ODECO)
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay | Director of research