"Commons Theory" - workshop in Bonn in May 2007. But you've got to be a scholar. And young.

A reader sent me this link to a May 2007 Commons Theory Workshop "for young scholars" at the Max Planck Institute for Research, in Bonn, Germany, in May 2007. Outline:

"In recent years, the increasing commodification of information production has led to a broad debate in intellectual property, communications, broadcasting, media, contract and privacy law, as well as in Internet governance, about whether self-governed 'commons' are a feasible and desirable alternative institutional arrangement. This debate includes analyses of the open source movement and a fresh interest in calibrating the boundary between intellectual property rights and the public domain. It also focuses on the privatization of Internet governance, network neutrality rules in telecommunications law, the propertization of the radio frequency spectrum as well as on media concentration."

"Theoretical work on these issues attempts to develop a general 'commons theory' that underlies and unifies these problems. On May 7-9, 2007, the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, in collaboration with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, will hold a workshop on commons theory, which is intended to advance this debate in Europe. The idea of the workshop is to enable a small number of European doctoral students, post-docs and assistant professors from law and related disciplines to engage in an intensive, rigorous discussion of their own scholarly work with two law professors from the United States. For this purpose, Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law School) and Professor Tim Wu (Columbia Law School) will participate in the workshop. They will be supported by Professor Christoph Engel (Director at the Max Planck Institute) and Stefan Bechtold (Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute)."

Links in excerpt above added.