From the Introduction:

As David (2003a, 2004a) points out, in the agricultural society the farmers faced the problem called “the tragedy of commons”, if the meadows were not well fenced. In such conditions the cattle of the neighbor could eat the farmer’s grass as a free rider. This social problem resulted in overgrazing, which gradually destroyed the preconditions for successful farming in the whole village. The practical solution was to build fences between the neighbors. As the Nobel Prize winner Coase showed in his celebrated article “The Problem of Social Cost” the theoretical solution was to establish or foster the system of property rights. Ever since the rise of modern industrial capitalism the property rights based system has proved to be a very effective engine of technological progress. However, the production of private goods and services as inputs for higher human well-being has been only one side of the coin. In addition, technological progress has always (and nowadays more than ever) profited also from the new ideas imported from the Republic of Science, as Polanyi (1967) put it.

In the domain of open science the use of a mathematical algorithm or a chemical reaction equation by one researcher does not diminish the use value of the very same algorithm or equation for other researchers. On the contrary, the more e.g. the algorithms are used and further developed, the more variation there is in the science and the more spillovers one can wait for in the future. Some of the spin-offs are purely scientific by their nature, whereas some others may be useful from the more practical technological perspective. Through the variation generating spin-offs open science indirectly contributes to the welfare of mankind. Of course, also the development of science itself has a positive value per se. It makes the world we live in more intelligible even if it does not directly contribute to the human well-being.

Why has the rise of science had such a great impact on the progress of technology? As the most sophisticated and justified form of knowledge scientific ideas have some peculiar properties, which help us understand their ability to generate positive spin-offs. The basic characteristics of knowledge as a commodity, which will be analyzed in more detail later, are indivisibility, durability, non-rivalness in use or an ability to expand infinitely, and partial excludability or even non-excludability.

Together these peculiarities constitute what the economists call pure public goods. In the science policy context I will call them the commons of open science. Ever since the seminal contributions of Nelson (1959) and Arrow (1962) the economists have known that the production of knowledge cannot be founded on the pure market logic solely because of some crucial market failures. In order to maximize the long-run contribution of science a special institutional design was needed. It simply could not be based on the same “property rights only count” logic as the functioning of the open markets of private goods. A different kind of reputation based incentive system and the principle of disclosure (instead of secrecy) were needed and in fact developed and used (David 2004b). In spite of some problems, the traditional science system really seemed to work pretty well as a dynamo of new scientific ideas, thus indirectly contributing to the rise of new technological innovation and, finally, productivity growth. I would like to label this fruitful co-evolutionary era between science and technology as the “comedy of commons” (Rose 1986).

Recently, however, we have faced a strong tendency towards the privatization of the domain of scientific knowledge. Following the lead of some prominent economists of science (David and Nelson, in particular) I claim that the tendency towards the strengthening of intellectual property rights in the domain of science may first erode the basis of successful science and then, in the longer run, also the basis for technological progress. This is what Heller and Eisenberg (1998) have called the “tragedy of anti-commons” in the sense that high entry charges imposed by the monopoly right holders of scientific ideas and research methods may result in obstacles for the conduct of science, thus weakening or even destroying the fruitful co-evolution between science and technology.