Interesting Peer Production Paper

by on October 5, 2006 · 2 comments

Through Open Government for British Columbia (there’s a blog for everything and I read them all), I’ve stumbled across an interesting article called The Political Economy of Peer Production.

To those of you skeptical of all things peer as a broad attack on markets and capitalism, I quote the following: “Despite significant differences, P2P and the capitalist market are highly interconnected. P2P is dependent on the market and the market is dependent on P2P.”

Consistent with the peer production theory, I’m not going to offer a lot of gloss. I leave that to you commenters.

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Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. He avoids genuine life experience by watching lots and lots of reality TV.

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  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel Le

    To those of you skeptical of all things peer as a broad attack on markets and capitalism, I quote the following: “Despite significant differences, P2P and the capitalist market are highly interconnected.

    Hmmm. Its not the case that peer production is inherently opposed to markets or capitalism. In fact, I will argue that vertically integrated, and traditional firms rely on their own forms of peer production.

    A lot of sentiment about peer production (and P2Ps) arises from historical developments, which tended to be on the legal fringes. Other than that, I don’t think anyone is opposed to the things you mention per se.

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel Le

    To those of you skeptical of all things peer as a broad attack on markets and capitalism, I quote the following: “Despite significant differences, P2P and the capitalist market are highly interconnected.

    Hmmm. Its not the case that peer production is inherently opposed to markets or capitalism. In fact, I will argue that vertically integrated, and traditional firms rely on their own forms of peer production.

    A lot of sentiment about peer production (and P2Ps) arises from historical developments, which tended to be on the legal fringes. Other than that, I don’t think anyone is opposed to the things you mention per se.

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