The register in diagrams

Why the register distributes nothing

Consider what it means for a register to hold works. Any register that is read distributes a scarce good: visibility. A work that appears in the register is more visible than a work that does not. If the register is not perfectly open, it becomes a distributor of value, and anything that distributes value unevenly becomes a market, whether or not money changes hands.

Every design option I considered encountered this same problem. A supervised register, in which some works were admitted and others excluded, would make admission itself the scarce good. Two parties seeking to attest the same derivation would be in conflict not because the work demanded it but because the register's gate made one position more valuable than another. Admission would attract strategies of capture: reciprocal citations, favours exchanged, positioning relative to whatever the gatekeeping body preferred. If instead the register were open but ranked (eg through tokens, through priority of attestation, through inferred quality) the ranking would become the scarce good, and works would piggyback on high-visibility sources as a way of borrowing their shine. If a token were issued at entry as a mark of recognition, the token would become a commodity as soon as it could be transferred, and a liability as soon as it could be lost. Even a non-transferable token would tie the record to a particular holder, and if the holder could not be found (through death, incapacity, or simple absence) the record would be orphaned from its own authentication. In effect, the token would become a small piece of proprietary logic smuggled into the commons by the back door.

The reasoning converged on a single principle. The register must not distribute anything scarce. This meant no gatekeeping, otherwise admission becomes capital. It also meant no ranking, or visibility becomes a hierarchy. And also, no tokens, otherwise recognition itself becomes a commodity. Finally, it meant no custody, otherwise the record becomes a point of failure.

These four refusals are not four positions; they are one position stated four ways. What survives when they are all applied is the register's actual subject: the relation between works, the lineage of a work's life, the visibility that comes from being recorded at all rather than from being ranked or rewarded. A work is in the register or it is not. There is nothing further to win or trade, and there is nothing to lose. That is what makes the register resistant to capture and it is also what makes it a commons rather than a market

The substrate, briefly

The register is not a registry. It is a shared grammar: a common schema (contentHash · title · contributors · licence · phase · uri · date), a derivation reference (refUID within a registry), a URI convention that makes cross-registry reference possible (easscan:// ipfs:// doi:// urn:blackbox:), and one rule: non-discretionary entry.

Above the substrate sit three adopted layers. EO1 carries the ethos and governs its own projects through its DAO. Cluster registries are views over the register, each governed by its own body. External registries (eg libraries, archives, DOI systems, editioning venues) are referenced. The register records relations; it does not host files.