Nondominium

Nondominium is a new form of property applied to a resource, where the resource owns itself or it is not owned by anyone but anyone has access to it, based on a predefined set of rules. The term autonomous resource is also used. It was first proposed by Chris Cook with the following original intention: "Many indigenous peoples, such as American Indians and Australian Aborigines, find it impossible to understand how anyone can own land". It is the expression find it impossible to understand that must be underlined here. Therefore nondominium is used for assets for which the notion of ownership cannot be applied: no one can own, even if they wanted to.

See more on the p2p Wiki.

Nondominium resources are capture resistant from within and outside.

Example

The Bitcoin Network is a great example of a shared asset under the nondominium property regime: no one can own it, in the traditional sense of the term. In fact, it is impossible to apply private property to the entire network. It is also important to note that there are no mechanisms to gain possession of the network without destroying the network. Also, private property operates within the network: minors own their computers. But no independent minor can offer the Bitcoin service of token transfer. The Bitcoin service is an emergent property of multiple minors sharing the same protocol. This emergent feature is a nondominium type of property.

In another possible implementation, nondominium is a legal framework whereby all ownership rights in a resources are transferred to a Custodian established for that purpose. The Custodian acts in accordance with the Custodian Agreement, which is comprised of a Charter to return a subset of the use rights to the individuals based on a predefined set of rules. This set of rules can be embodied as a benefits distribution algorithm, which provides access to nondominium resources based on merit (or some other set of credentials), which is computed in real time based on past contributions or involvement in a project or venture. The Sensorica Montreal lab, where affiliates of the OVN perform hardware prototyping activities, is under the nondominium property regime. But the nondominium property regime of the lab is also enforced by the fact that the materials (consumables, tools and equipment) in the space is an aggregate composed of materials brought in by various individuals, some of which are under private property regime, others into a shared property regime (see more on inventory). If someone tries to enclose or capture these materials all the individual owners of these shared assets can pull the out, thus the lab, as a capacity for hardware prototyping dissipates.

See also

• commons
• pool of shareables
• resource type
• Draft of the OVN Nondominium Agreement - old document
• Nondominium on P2P Foundation
• the original document written by Kurt Laitner - old document