Press Kit
Press & Media
Everything a journalist or reviewer needs to cover The Commons Captured — fact sheet, cover art, quotable lines, and author bio.
Fact sheet
- Title
- The Commons Captured
- Subtitle
- A Critical History of Wikipedia's Promise
- Author
- Michael J Bommarito II
- Publisher
- Michael J Bommarito II
- First Edition
- 2026
- Pages
- 275
- Parts & Chapters
- 5 parts · 23 chapters
- ISBN
- 979-8-951640-00-0 (paperback) · 979-8-951640-01-7 (eBook)
- Price
- $14.99 paperback · $9.99 Kindle
- License
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Website
- commonscaptured.com
In one line / one paragraph
Wikipedia launched under copyleft: use it freely, but keep it free. A critical history of how the Foundation came to sell the commons it was built to defend.
Wikipedia launched with a simple promise — use it freely, but keep it free. Twenty-five years later, the AI industry has quietly siphoned millions of hours of community effort while the Wikimedia Foundation profits. A critical history of how the custodians bound to protect free knowledge ended up selling it instead.
Quotable lines
Use it freely, but keep it free.
The license did not fail. The institution did.
The story of how the commons was captured, one choice at a time.
‘Anyone can edit’ became ‘anyone can scrape.’
Copyleft was invented to prevent exactly this. The institution meant to enforce it took the money.
Cover art
About the author
Michael J Bommarito II is a researcher and entrepreneur in AI, law, and finance, and has been part of free-software and open-knowledge communities since 1999.
His research has appeared in scientific journals, law reviews, and mainstream media, including Science, Physica A, and the New York Times. He co-founded LexPredict (acquired 2018) and was on the research team that tested GPT-4 against the bar exam.
He leads the ALEA Institute, a nonprofit devoted to open research and education on the ethical development of AI. He holds degrees in mathematics, political science, and financial engineering from the University of Michigan, and lives on a small farmstead in mid-Michigan.
Contact
Media inquiries: via commonscaptured.com or the author at michaelbommarito.com.