Feb 28th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Ghosh – Cooking Pot Markets: An Economic Model for Trade in Free Goods and Services on the Internet

Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer. “Cooking Pot Markets:  An Economic Model for Trade in Free Goods and Services on the Internet.” First Monday 3.2 (1998). 2/15/2010 <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/580/501>.

This article considers the motivations for producing free products – like Firefox, Netscape and other open-source (or not) freeware – for download over the internet.  The author argues that neither money nor altruism is the key motivator for free goods producers; rather, Ghosh notes that cultural and social capital and reputation are some of the key motivators behind free goods and services in the digital world.

A key tenet of Ghosh’s argument is the distinction drawn between value and money.  According to Ghosh, the value derived from the economics of gossip or other economic goods produced in the knowledge economy can be just as valuable as money because the economic logic of the internet values buzz as much as profit.  In addition to the exposure argument, Ghosh notes how all transactions on the we are actually participations in a market logic of give and take of knowledge in the information economy; furthermore, because the net is dynamically reevaluating itself at all times  – especially in the individuated nature of internet navigation and reading practices – the value derived through your unique interaction on the web is unique every time – it always has a new price tag.

The cooking pot model suggests that people not only produce goods to create a better web persona/reputation, but that they also take “ideas” from others contributing to the pot.  Because duplication is a nearly zero-effort (materially) process in digital worlds the contribution of an idea can be multiplied exponentially.  The utility of these ideas encourages further idea generation and submission into the cooking pot economy.

Feb 28th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Rajagopal and Bojin – Cons in the Panopticon: Anti-Globalization and Cyber-Piracy

Rajagopal, Indhu and Nis Bojin. “Cons in the Panopticon:  Anti-Globalization and Cyber-Piracy.” First Monday 9.6 (2004). 2/15/2010 <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1174/1094>.

Rajagopal and Bojin argue that the internet is fast becoming a corporately controlled panopticon that regulates the social, economic, and political relationships between users and corporations.  In response to the panopticonization of the internet by corporate interests, Rajagopal and Bojin posit that piracy and anti-capitalist gift economies act as “global resistance movements” that allow have-not digerati to cater to the desires of a global internet community traditionally accustomed to receiving technological products through top-down, Global North to Global South dissemination methods.

The authors also sketch the internet chain of pirate distribution in this article.  Specifically, Rajagopal and Bojin characterize internet piracy as triple tiered.  The top tier, or “upper echelon” is comprised of crackers, hackers, release groups, and couriers – the real symbolic analytic pirates.  In the second tier, or “middle echelon” you find methods of distribution and communication including Usenet and IRC.  In the bottom tier, or lower echelon, you find gift economy communities like P2P exchanges, bittorrent trackers, and warez sites.

The authors also note how the rise of an information society means that knowledge has begun a commodification process wherein control regimes and commercialization of information negates access of said knowledge to the working poor.  In opposition to this commodification are digital gift economies that allow users to come to information free of charge; however, draconian copyright legislation is threatening to recolonize and commodify much of the intellectual labor and information dispersed through gift-oriented economic models.

The authors see the internet as panopticon playing out in the surveillance technologies of ISPs, social networking sites, spy/adware and search engines.  To combat the corporate panopticon of the internet, the authors adopt two conceptual themes:

1. Piracy against commercial hegemony and privatization of the internet
2. The establishment of communal autonomy and communal currency on the internet.

Theme one emphasizes the commodification of information and its subsequent commercialization through internet channels.  Commodity fetishism works through digital networks to turn class antagonism “into a desire for commodities and for accumulation of capital.”  Theme two articulates how communal autonomy established over disparate transnational computer networks – spread over the three tiers mentioned above – challenge capitalist corporatization of the digital public sphere.

Feb 28th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

James and Johnson – Bowling Alone but Online Together: Social Capital in E-Communities

Scott, James and Thomas Johnson. “Bowling Alone but Online Together:  Social Capital in E-Communities.” Community Development 36 1 (2006): 9-28. Print.

In this work Scott and Johnson consider how voluntary association online creates e-communities; further, the authors also consider what the evolution of electronic communities presents for community development theory.  To serve this purpose the authors ask the following questions:

1. What are the key features of online communities?
2. How do they compare to (offline) communities of place?
3. How are they designed and developed?
4. How do e-community members use them to affect collective action?

Working from Robert Putnam’s articulation about the decline of social organizations in the United States over the last 50 years, Scott and Johnson discover community alternatives existing in the non-physical space of the internet.  The authors note that the e-community is a much richer environment than past internet sites of CMC like chat rooms, discussion lists, or collaboration systems.  The formation of ecommunities are predicated on a couple of core tenets by Ostrom (1991):

1. Communities that share a common resource must have boundaries.  This makes distinctions between who has access and who doesn’t clear in order to protect the digital commons of the ecommunity.
2. Rules governing the collective use of resources are geared to the needs of members.
3. Sanctions are appropriate – and whenever possible, enforced by members
4. Some conflict in inevitable.  Community members must be able to access low-cost tools for conflict resolution.

The authors recognize that a key component to productive online communities are “reputation systems” that augment members’ identities.  These identities are subject to the technologies that filter information, connect potential collaborators and establish and enforce standards of community that govern (11).

The authors establish some key characteristics of online communities:

1. Membership – usually self-selected based on common interest
2. Identity – Extra-legal.  Not locatable.  Actions are rarely anonymous
3. Norms – formal and informal.  Fairly absolute and single sanctions
4. Authentic communication – overcomes space-time limits through technology.  Constrained by Internet access and lack of media “bandwidth.”
5. Respect or Status – Readily apparent.  Cumulative.  General.  Earned by positive contribution and peer review.
6. Social capital – one of a few resources to affect collective action.

Key Definitions:

1. Online communities – groups of people with common interests that communicate regularly, and for some duration, in an organized way over the Internet (Ridings et.al. 2002) (9).
2. Community – a group of people sharing common rights, privileges, or interests, or living in the same place under the same lawas and regulations (10).
3. Social capital – the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively (12).

Feb 28th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Hansmann and Santilli – Authors’ and Artists’ Moral Rights

Hansmann, Henry and Marina Santilli. “Authors’ and Artists’ Moral Rights:  A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis.” The Journal of Legal Studies 26 1 (1997): 95-143. Print.

This article considers the European civil-law jurisdiction of “moral rights” and their recent adoption in the United States.  Moral rights are essentially an artists’ – or deceased artists’ family’s – rights to works of art even after the transfer of copyright from artist to another individual/organization.  Specifically, the authors of this piece conduct a sustained economic analysis to determine how moral rights statues effect the “reputational externalities to the potential benefit, not just of the individual artist, but of other owners of the artist’s work and of the public at large” (95).  The article also argues for a replacement of moral rights doctrine with an expanded copyright system that recognizes the rights to display of visual artists.

The authors discuss the four basic moral rights in this article before beginning their economic analysis of moral rights.  The right of integrity -an artist’s work must remain in its original state to protect the artist’s personal feelings over the work, the artist’s reputation, and the community interest in the work – becomes the primary emphasis of this legal study.  As an alternative to the right of integrity, the authors provide a couple of legal options:

1. Copyright – This accepts the premise that by copyrighting a piece of art you actually are turning a public good into a private good because after copyright the good can be capitalized by the artist.
2. Trademark Law – working in concert with the Lanham Act, trademark law outlaws false representations of goods and services.  The authors claim that trademark law can work as integrity rights because it can be invoked to protect reputation by imposters.
3. Display Rights – This would allow visual artists to maintain the same amount of control as copyright provides for literary authors.  In other words, each viewing of a piece by a visual artist would command royalty.
4. Leasing – The use of the lease, instead of selling artwork, would allow the artist to maintain control over the work of art despite being “viewed” by someone else.

After providing alternatives to the right of integrity, the authors note how the right of integrity is enforceable during the artist’s life and after the artist’s death.  They also highlight what sort of damages can be rewarded for infringing on an artist’s right of integrity and discuss how different countries in Europe deal with the alienable or inalienable position of moral rights.   Besides the right to integrity, the authors also briefly discuss the other three moral rights:

1. The right to withdraw – The artist has the right to withdraw a work from public view even after selling the piece.
2. The right of disclosure – The artist has the choice to determine if and when their work is ready to be displayed to the public.
3. The right of attribution – The artists has the right to affirm their own works and disallow their name on works not completed by them.  It sounds obvious; however, a good case in point is the work of pseudonymous authors.

Feb 28th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Litman – Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age

Litman, Jessica. “Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age.” Oregon Law Review 19 (1996). 2/15/2010      <http://www.personal.umich.edu/~jdlitman/papers/revising.html>.

Litman argues in this now seminal piece that copyright law is based on a model devised for print media; however, the influx of live, filmed, and taped performances, televised media and digital media are rendering that model untenable.  Litman also recognizes that because of the large amounts of money wrapped up in copyright litigation, a new model for copyright law is unlikely to appear anytime soon.

After asking the question, “[H]ow can we define the compensable units in which we reckon copyright protection to provide incentives for creation and dissemination, while preserving the public’s opportunities to read view, listen to, learn from and build on copyrighted works? Litman provides extensive background information that demonstrates how current copyright law fails to take into account new forms of digital media, digital replication, and duplication of media non-commercial/non-institutional actors.  In so doing, she demonstrates how a copyright exemption of digital materials would allow for growth and promote public interest in copyright after market capitalization.

In the end, Litman hopes to scrap the current IP system in favor of a new set of rules that: 1) preserve some incentives for copyright holders; 2) makes some sense from the viewpoint of individuals; 3) are easy to learn; and 4) seem sensible and just to the people we are asking to obey them.  To achieve this Litman recommends a reconceptualization of copyright that isn’t focused on reproduction but instead is in favor of the right of commercial exploitation.  If this solution is too radical, Litman recommends a non-commercial copying right for the public domain and an integrity right that would be integral to maintaining authenticity in the face of digital replication.