Reading (For Dummies)

The Hi-Tech Gift Economy

Jason sends me a very interesting little socio-poli-economic piece on why the 'net doesn't like copyright. It's an interesting read, although the writer gets a few major points wrong. Open source software is copyrighted, it's just licensed in a way that gives everyone permission to copy it. If it did not have a copyright, then violations against the license would be completely unenforcable. While technically I guess saying that GPL'd software isn't copyrighted is closer to the truth, the software generally does have an 'owner' in the strictest sense.

And again, this entire piece is relying on the idea that ideas are what make an economy tick. I guess these days that is true (in my opinion, anyway, but I'm no economist). Maybe I'm just out of the loop since I receive lots of ideas for free, being a net idjut.

In any case, knowledge wants to be free...

"...the Net remains predominantly a gift economy even though the system has expanded far beyond the university. From scientists through hobbyists to the general public, the charmed circle of users was slowly built up through the adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed set of protocols. Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social conventions as well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information without payment is almost never questioned. Although the circulation of gifts doesn't necessarily create emotional obligations between individuals, people are still willing to donate their information to everyone else on the Net. Even selfish reasons encourage people to become anarcho-communists within cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user contributes to the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-line. In return, each individual has potential access to all the information made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of the Net than they can ever give away as an individual."