Is the P2P economy already bigger than the “information economy”?

In his remarkable presentation at Oekonux 4, Philippe Aigrain made a startling statement:

the share of GDP for providing means to non-market exchanges of information is twice bigger in developed countries than the economy of selling informationg as goods or services.

In other words, the business of creating platforms for p2p exchanges is already bigger than the information economy of selling immaterial goods.

As this would already be a key argument for the maturation of peer to peer within the existing market economy, I asked him for the source of this statement.

Here’s the reply from Philippe Aigrain:

“This was developed in : UNU-MERIT and partners, Study on the economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector in the EU, November 2006.

See pages 123 to 126. A point of caution on interpreting these figures : the notion of providing means to non-market information exchanges includes providing means to exchanges within organizations or across organizations (it is not just about individuals).”

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.