“[W]e are seeing an ever-more self-conscious adoption of commons-based practices as a modality of information production and exchange. Free software, Creative Commons, the Public Library of Science, the new guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on free publication of papers, new open archiving practices, librarian movements, and many other communities of practice are developing what was a contingent fact into a self-conscious social movement. As the domain of existing information and culture comes to be occupied by information and knowledge produced within these free sharing movements and licensed on the model of open-licensing techniques, the problem of the conflict with the proprietary domain will recede. Twentieth-century materials will continue to be a point of friction, but a sufficient quotient of twenty- first-century materials seem now to be increasingly available from sources that are happy to share them with future users and creators. If this social-cultural trend continues over time, access to content resources will present an ever-lower barrier to nonmarket production.” With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in his thought-provoking book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006). The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment. In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing – and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained – or lost – by the decisions we make today.1 Yochai Benkler is a professor of law at Yale Law School. Previously, he had been a professor at New York University School of Law, where he was the director of the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law and Policy and of the Information Law Institute. His research focuses on the effects of laws that regulate information production and exchange on the distribution of control over information flows, knowledge and cultural production in the digital environment. His particular focus has been on the neglected role of commons-based approaches towards management of resources in the digitally networked environment. He has written about the economics and political theory of rules governing infrastructure, such as wireless communications and telecommunications law, rules governing private control over information, in particular intellectual property, and of relevant aspects of US constitutional law. |