Data and Digital Intelligence Commons: Making a Case for Community Ownership

Most people still see data as ordinary knowledge or information best subject to 'open access' regimes. This is also the moral basis for the advocacy of free global flows of data. It is an argument that many, if not most, civil society activists worldwide often fall prey to.

This research paper attempts to develop a theoretical basis for asserting community ownership over much of data -- the concept of community data. This goes against the current dominant understanding of data as an open global resource for anyone to take freely, with no community governance regimes around it. In this regard, the paper, somewhat summarily, employs Elinor Ostrom's IAD model.