Norwegian Law

Norwegian law (as well as in Sweden and elsewhere: Øian et al. 2018, 41). These laws allow “non-owners” the right to “walk through uncultivated land at any time provided they exercise due care,” with the same rights applying “to cultivated land in the winter months” – and this without charge. Specifically, non-owners are allowed to pick berries, mushrooms, and flowers; and to pitch a tent for up to two nights, before needing to ask permission of the landowner ([Norwegian] Outdoor Recreation Act, 1957). To be sure, property owners – farmers, cabin owners, etc. – retain their individual property rights: in particular, they can charge for more specific activities on their land, such as hunting. But the protection of public access in these ways thereby shades these property rights into a more inclusive sort. These laws thereby recall and to some degree reinstantiate premodern Western notions of nature and defined lands as “commons,” as property jointly held by and accessible to all members of a community (Ess 2016). This is the sense of the “commons” as also invoked in the “creative commons” licensing schemes.

Readers may recall that, in chapter 1, I warned against the dangers of either/or thinking (pp. 10, 26–8). These examples of relational autonomy and allemannsretten are helpful in providing us critical middle grounds in what it might otherwise be tempting to treat as an either/or – whether between individual and relational selves and/or, correlatively, exclusive and inclusive conceptions of property. At the same time, allemannsretten shows that such middle grounds are not restricted to digital domains only. Rather, these examples of commons-like property stand as important real-world examples that further counter arguments against copyleft schemes as somehow utopian, excessively idealistic, etc.