Freecycle

Freecycle one of the largest examples of gift economy on the planet today. Its basic premice is that people, rather than throwing their old good away or even taking them to charity shops, post a message to others in their community announcing that they don't need an item any longer, and people are able to pick that item at their earliest convenience.

Unlike what capitalists would want us to believe, Freecycle has been very successful and now it operates in many different countries, and constantly facilitates reuse of goods by individuals.

Controversies

(section from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freecycle_Network)

• Corporate Sponsorship - In February 2005, Deron Beal accepted TFN's first corporate support of $130,000 from Waste Management, Inc. [1]. This polarized opinion amongst group moderators. Some saw it as a sensible way of raising funds from a company Beal describes as America's "largest recycler", but others saw it as selling out to corporate interests. Further criticism was provoked by a decision to take paid Google ads on the Freecycle web site, contrary to the initial stated principles, and by Beal's green ambassador role for WMI [2].

• Use of Funds. Some members have challenged how sponsorship funds have been allocated. The initial goals were to use this for a new website, Beal's salary and lawyers' fees. After the first year, the new web site had not appeared, although $45K had received by Beal in salary, and an unstated sum spent on legal expenses. However, the web site was claimed to be on schedule for Q1 2006.

• Trademark. Beal has been criticized for vigorously defending the Freecycle trademark, at the expense of closing down disobedient community groups and imposing precise rules on logos and language for groups. Beal inists this is solely to prevent commercial interests taking the name and establishing an inappropriate freecycle.com. (In fact, Whois shows the current registration for freecycle.com was filed May 29, 2000, long before the current controversy.) A formal trademark opposition [3] was filed in January 2006. FreecycleSunnyvale filed a lawsuit in federal court against The Freecycle Network [4] in January 2006. An injunction was granted against Tim Oey in 2006 for disparaging the Freecycle trademark, but this was later stayed upon appeal. These disputes relate to Freecycle in the US. In the United Kingdom and Europe the Freecycle Network's ownership of the Trademark has been confirmed and is undisputed.

• Logo Origin. The Freecycle logo[5] consists of clip art images [6] [7] that are copyrighted by Microsoft and are specifically prohibited from being used in a corporate logo or for commercial purposes [8].

• Dismissing dissenters. Freecycle began removing many groups not registered, or subsequently deregistered on TFN's web directory of freecycle groups; The Freecycle Network cites "refusing to comply with its practices and direction" as the reason for this. Group moderators receive cease-and-desist emails and a request made to Yahoo! to close the group account. This has happened to groups with as many as 4,500 active members, for example Baton Rouge, Louisiana [9][10] and Ann Arbor,Michigan[11]. At times, mass deletions of up to 500 groups at one time have been alleged. Starting in North America, these purges extended later in 2005 to Europe where a group TFN alleged to be "rogue" was closed down in Leicestershire. The criteria for action, to quote from a TFN warning e-mail, "trademark-protected Freecycle name and logo, as well as any and all copyrighted texts, graphics, rules, and guidelines, in any part of the group including the title, or its URL". Many of these dissenters have changed their groups' names and continued to operate their own independent groups, many of which are following the FreecycleSunnyvale litigation. In 2006, following a vote of remaining Freecycle moderators on the freecyclemodsquad mailing list it was decided that co-ownership of each Freecycle yahoo group should be assigned to a Freecycle.org address, so it is no longer necessary for TFN to close a group in order to remove dissenting moderators.

Rules

In order to post an item to the Freecycle board it must be accessible to all everybody in your community (which includes accessibility for all ages). Due to that rule some items are not allowed by their very nature (such as pornography, weapons, etc). Also a person cannot be asking any monetary or other compensation for the item, however, can expect the receiver to pick the item up without any help.

See also

• gift economy

External link

• Freecycle Network