Bens comuns: uma análise linguística e terminológica

• Main Author: Vieira, Miguel Said
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra 2015-10-01
• Series: MatLit : Materialidades da Literatura
• Subjects: intellectual commons; language; translation
• Online Access: http://iduc.uc.pt/index.php/matlit/article/view/2110

The expansion of practices for sharing cultural artifacts made possible by digitization and communication networks has led researchers to apply the notion of commons to the field of intellectual property – in cases such as open-source software, Wikipedia, and open-access scientific publication, for example. This article deals with linguistic and terminological issues raised by this concept and its translations (in particular, into Portuguese); examines common sources of misunderstanding, such as the conflation of the legal, economic, and theological meanings of “commons”; reviews similar words and phrases in other languages; and discusses the merits and disadvantages of the existing options in Portuguese – mainly the option for “common goods” [“bens comuns”].