Some Peer-to-Peer, Democratically and Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,' by Yochai Benkler

18 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2007

See all articles by Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

Franklin Pierce Center for IP at UNH Law

Abstract

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the Internet is easy enough to be optimistic enough as a technological achievement, but just as nuclear fission can be harnessed both for electrical power generation and annihilating destruction, the raw communicative capabilities can't be qualitatively assessed without reference to specific content. Pornography and its symbiotic relationship to the Internet require thoughtful scrutiny. Astroturf and other targeted attempts to instrumentally distort democratic discourse need to be analyzed and possibly also rechanneled or contained. The impact of moving resources online upon people who substantially live in an offline, analog world, needs to be contemplated more fully.

Keywords: Internet, Cyberspace, Law, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Open Source, Pornography

JEL Classification: K2, K4

Suggested Citation

Bartow, Ann, Some Peer-to-Peer, Democratically and Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,' by Yochai Benkler. Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law, Vol. 5, p. 451, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=964735

Ann Bartow (Contact Author)

Franklin Pierce Center for IP at UNH Law ( email )

Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
United States

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