Mutually Owned Media (MoM) is a structured commons model that treats creative work as something a community can grow together, while still supporting a durable income for the people who actually make the work.
It starts with Free Culture as the default “outer surface” of publication, but adds intentional inner layers of licensing and reciprocity so that creators can earn, reinvest, and keep producing without handing control to publishers or extracting shareholders. - wikipedia.org 
This is not “donations only.” Gifts, patronage, and tipping can exist, but the aim is a full-spectrum economic design where some uses remain free forever, some uses fund the work, and the rules are designed to migrate toward openness over time. - wikipedia.org
The core idea is a layered publishing onion: the same work can exist simultaneously in multiple licence layers, with clear rules about what is permitted in each layer and how content “moves outward.”.
The outer layer is fully Free Culture content, typically under permissive Creative Commons terms that allow reuse, remix, and even commercial use with attribution. This layer is the public commons that anyone can build on, and it is designed to grow as fast as possible. - creativecommons.org
An inner layer may use Creative Commons licences that add constraints, such as non-commercial or share-alike, to protect early-stage creator income or community goals. This layer is explicitly treated as transitional rather than a permanent enclosure. - creativecommons.org
The innermost layer is a proposed Hitchhiker Licence, a community-defined licence intended to protect creator livelihood and commons integrity while the work is most financially vulnerable. The key difference is purpose: restrictions exist to accelerate the growth of the commons and fairly reward authors, not to maximise publisher leverage or rent extraction.
# Incentives and Migration The constitution of Mutually Owned Media tries to make “more open, sooner” the default behaviour, by turning time delays and restrictions into explicit instruments for commons expansion rather than indefinite control. The goal is to prevent a system where content stays locked because it is profitable to keep it locked.
One simple rule is time-based migration, where works automatically move from the inner layer to the outer layer after a community-defined period, unless there is an exceptional, transparent reason to extend. The point of the clock is to remove the need for individual bargaining and reduce “licence limbo.”.
Another rule is reciprocity-based migration, where contributors who support the commons, financially or through labour, gain earlier access or broader rights, while the general public still receives a guaranteed path to the free layer. This is designed to reward participation without creating a permanent paywall.
Mutually Owned Media assumes there is a shared publishing service that behaves like an “app store,” but without extractive incentives. It provides distribution, discovery, tooling, payments, analytics, moderation, accessibility, and long-term archival support as a cooperative utility.
A community-defined fee funds this publishing service, ideally as a simple percentage or flat charge that is transparent, reviewable, and capped by constitutional rules. The fee is justified as infrastructure funding, not rent, and it should be accountable to creators and the community rather than investors.
The critical constraint is that the fee must not become a disguised platform tax that recreates the same dynamics as corporate app stores. Governance, transparency, and competition through Power of Fork are essential to keep the service honest.
# Governance and Constitution Mutually Owned Media depends on credible governance, because “who decides the layers, the timelines, and the exceptions” is the whole game. A constitution can set defaults, limits, and auditability so the system does not drift toward enclosure.
Key constitutional commitments often include creator primacy over publisher primacy, a bias toward outward migration, clear definitions of acceptable restrictions, and strong anti-capture measures so a small group cannot quietly extend locks forever. Because this model touches livelihood and control, it also needs dispute resolution that feels fair to non-lawyers, plus legible documentation so that the community can actually understand what it is agreeing to.
# Challenges and Failure Modes Licence complexity is a real risk. If ordinary users cannot understand which layer applies, when migration happens, or how to comply, the system will be ignored or accidentally violated, which harms both creators and the commons. Non-commercial restrictions are notoriously ambiguous in practice. Communities often disagree about what “commercial” means, and enforcement can become selective or politicised, creating friction and uncertainty for downstream reuse. Time-delayed release can reduce near-term revenue if the delay is too short, but can also fail the commons mission if it is too long. Tuning these timelines is a governance problem, not a purely economic one, and it can become a recurring culture war inside the community. A platform fee can drift upward over time, even in good-faith cooperatives, especially if tooling costs grow or governance participation declines. If the publishing servi