A rich information commons is vital to the widespread diffusion of social production. Without the commons, sharing, collaborating, and taking collective action1 are stymied. Yochai Benkler (2006), in his seminal work The Wealth of Networks, argued that new social patterns of information production could still be industrialized by the market through both state intervention and the incumbent control of communications infrastructure (p. 22-28). This article will explain where he was correct and how his claim might be invalidated.
Benkler (2006) opined that a democratic state which does not implement social policy to protect and promote the free exchange of information is missing an opportunity to enrich its democracy (p. 28). In fact, the benefits of an open information commons could be numerous. For example, Benkler stated that the publication of scientific research to the public commons is helping poorer nations to develop improved agricultural production methods (Benkler, 2006, p. 14). Certainly, this information sharing empowers citizens of impoverished states with a means to rise above subsistence problems and thereafter tackle issues related to their greater good.
However, Benkler (2006) explained that incumbents in the marketplace, primarily led by cultural production bodies like Hollywood, have already actively worked to control information production to preserve their industrial interests (p. 23). Indeed, the market made its first major move to industrialize contemporary social patterns of information production with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 [DMCA]2. Organizations representing market incumbents successfully lobbied government to enact the DMCA, which serves to protect incumbents’ ability to sell cultural products as packaged goods (Benkler, 2008, p. 25). To protect against the digital piracy of these packaged, copyright-protected works, the DMCA punishes persons who circumvent copyright protection systems3, the so-called “Digital Rights Management” [DRM] technologies implemented by cultural producers in throughout various hardware and software4. Such a move by the market indicates that, with government intervention, future social production could be subject to the controlling watchdog of industrial forces.
Furthermore, the communications infrastructure that permits social production is under the constant threat of protocol-specific interference from incumbents who physically own the infrastructure (“Test Your ISP”, retrieved 7 May 2009). Protocol-specific interference is the practice in which Internet Service Providers and other information carriers deliberately self-regulate which web services and content providers receive bandwidth priority. This practice is an upheaval of the time-honored principle of network neutrality5.
The DMCA and the movement to cease network neutrality are just two examples of the market pushing to industrialize social production; they represent the market’s attempt to remove some of the “existing information and cultural resources out of which new statements must be made”6. Naturally, these new statements surface from user co-modification of readily accessed content from the public information commons. Thus, removing access to the information commons is the only way the market can control content. Of course, removing access is financial suicide for all parties involved; access to the network is inherent to their business models.
Moreover, and unfortunately enough for incumbents, Benkler’s concern that the market could control cultural production in any real way is contravened by John Fiske’s (1987) notion of the semiotic democracy7 and Henry Jenkins’ (2006) thoughts on participatory culture. Additionally, Eric von Hippel (2005) contends that “user-innovators” in the information space will continue to freely reveal their works. Plus, the establishment of the “Creative Commons”8 (“About”, retrieved 7 May 2009) licensing project further disposes of Benkler’s claim.
Fiske’s (1987) Television Culture, raised the observation that television viewers independently attribute their own meanings and relationships to the televisual content they consume, regardless of the producers’ intent. By extension, it is clear that cultural content consumers continuously craft new meanings from diverse cultural products, meanings that exist separate from the market’s creative intentions. This, as Fiske would label it, is “semiotic democracy” in action.
Jenkins (2006) elaborated on notions of semiotic democracy further, describing the concept of participatory culture in his book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. Communities develop a “collective intelligence” through the breakdown of communication constraints. (Lévy, 1997, as cited in Jenkins, 2006). In the absence of constraint, subcultures then emerge from these communities that promote the appropriation of copyright-protected content and the production of “home-brew” works which utilize this content (Jenkins, 2006). Subsequently, this new material promotes new meanings. Applying Clay Shirky’s (2008) “sharing, collaborating, and collective action” principles, new social production tools invariably enable users to create communities and generate new content with prior market productions, irrespective of copyright claims.
Eric von Hippel (2005) stated that user-innovators, or consumers who adopt and re-engineer market commodities to suit their specific needs, tend to freely reveal how they innovated their acquired goods (p. 9). This freely revealed information is distributed to the information commons. Thus, Hippel (2005) contended that the free publication of innovations would continue in the cultural space – that cultural ideas would also undergo user innovation and be freely shared (p. 17). In summary, with the combined influences of semiotic democracy, participatory culture, collective intelligence, and user innovation, social production will go on, uninhibited by market forces.
To buoy social production, new creations in the social production space can be ably licensed with “Creative Commons”9 licenses. Creative Commons licenses make it easy to openly share and build upon the works of others while remaining consistent with existing copyright laws (“About”, retrieved 7 May 2009). The market can do little to contend with legally generated, socially produced content that passes from user to user under such licenses.
In conclusion, Benkler (2006) was correct to assert that the market could still move to control social production. Indeed, it has already made significant efforts to do so, such as the DMCA and the abrogation of network neutrality. However, Benkler’s (2006) fear of market control is easily waylaid by various theories about social production and user interaction with content, including such concepts as the semiotic democracy (Fiske, 1987), a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006), and user innovation (Hippel, 2005). Shirky’s (2008) social media principles of sharing, collaborating, and collective action are, in this author’s opinion, ultimately immutable. This is because new social patterns of information production will continue unmitigated by market forces. How? As actors in the information commons continue to produce new works, whether they be comprised of copyrighted materials or original creations, these works will freely fill the information commons for ages to come – works that will be sought after by consumers who generate their own cultural meanings and who apply their own important societal applications, regardless of copyright law, state intervention, or the preventative strategies of market incumbents.
References
About. (2009). On Creative Commons. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://creativecommons.org/about/
Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, 17 U.S.C. §1201, §1204 (2006).
Digital Rights Management – Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (2009, May 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 6 May 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
Fiske, J. (1987). Television culture. London: Methuen.
Hippel, E. v. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York University Press.
Lévy, P. (1997). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace. New York: Plenum Trade.
Network Neutrality. (2009, May 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.
Stark, E. (2007, January 18). Semiotic democracy and cultural transformation (or) the transformative power of semiotic democracy. Re-public: re-imagining democracy. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=102
Test Your ISP. (2009). In Electronic Frontier Foundation – Home – Our Work – Transparency. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://www.eff.org/testyourisp
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Footnotes
1See Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.
2Refer to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, 17 U.S.C. §1201, §1204 (2006). It contains some specific amendments created by the DMCA to 17 U.S.C., governing copyright.
3Ibid.
4See also Digital Rights Management – Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (2009, May 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 6 May 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
5For more on network neutrality, see Network Neutrality. (2009, May 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
6Phrase borrowed from Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press. p. 23.
7For more on the topic of semiotic democracy, see Stark, E.
8See About. (2009). On Creative Commons. Retrieved 7 May 2009, from http://creativecommons.org/about/
9Ibid.
