What do we call the commons in Switzerland?

After diving into Benkler, Lessig and other reads [1,2], I was wondering what the \”commons\” would correspond to in the German language and specifically to a Swiss legal term. The dictonary did not help. Illustrative examples for the commons are the public roads, the places, the woods and if you turn more technically e.g. the radio frequency spectrum. The government does have its fingers on them but grants access for the public for some of these resources.

As for example for public places in Switzerland there are three levels of intensity of usage. People can easily walk or chat with others on public places (\”schlichter Gemeingebrauch\”) as long as they do not allocate the place just for them selfs. If they want to gather for a political demonstration [3], the utilization corresponds to a second level (\”gesteigerter Gemeingebrauch\”). The intesity of a certain activity at this level is usually at such a strength where others get disturbed and therefore one basically needs to be authorized. Finally and thirdly, an exclusive activity (\”Sondernutzung\”) does require a concession.

Here we speak of \”öffentliche Sachen\” – probably best translated with \”public property\” . So commons from my point of view could be described as \”öffentliche Sachen\” or \”öffentliche Güter\” or maybe even better as \”Gemeingut\”.

[1] http://www.benkler.org/Pub.html
[2] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/lessigkeynote.pdf
[3] http://jumpcgi.bger.ch/cgi-bin/JumpCGI?id=BGE_127_I_164

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