Comments on: Web 2.0 and the Third Enclosure, part two: opposing the new digital sharecropping agreements

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:33:41 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this for several weeks, since one of the blogs I read recommended a ‘sharing’ site. The site’s agreement not only reserved the right to use the content that I was going to share with my peer group but also to sell it with no remuneration to me. Since then I’ve started collecting these agreements to begin looking at what we are ‘giving’ away.

I’m starting to think that a pure cooperative model will be the best method to ‘share the cost’ and ‘retain the control’. Whenever a third party enters the fray, there will be a cost, whether it is money, our content or our attention (via ads). Whether the service will remain successful depends on whether the perceived benefits outwhiegh the ‘profit’ that the third party garners from our usage.

Cooperatives share the base costs amoungst the users, but extract two rather expensive, if intangible, costs: shared goals that are cohesive enough to overcome the cost of management and agreement on policy/standards to ensure continued success of the venture. Unfortunately these two costs seem to have the effect of tipping the balance towards the profit-oriented providers in most cases.

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 03:33:17 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Lynda, but I think both the pragmatic and the more radical stance for autonomy are valid. Yes, the people who work on Web 2.0. platforms are advancing participation, bringing more and more people into it; I’m very sensitive to the stance that not everyone is a programmer and wishes to manage every aspect of his life, including our digital presence, fully by ourselves, so we are naturally interdependent. I also understand that those developers have a desire to have a sustainable life and hence are naturally drawn to hope for a commercial venture. At the same time, most of us, and I must admit that includes me, do not read the user agreements, and we are not aware of what exactly it is we are giving away. Letting others manage our date is one thing, but giving away the ownership of our creative work is another; and it is that aspect that Lawrence Lessig and Rik Moens are pointing out. As Web 2.0. companies become successfull and beholden to external shareholders interested in short-term profit, they are tempted by behaviours which is not in the interest of their users. The users then have two possibilities: use their common strength to call the platforms to order, as they are already doing in many cases, or, as Rik Moens suggests, build platforms that are ‘for-benefit’ by their very structure and governance, and where such temptation does not arise (though other problems may arise that are inherent to peer governance).

By: Lynda

Lynda — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:54:43 +0000

Wow. That’s a pretty throw-back view for a community that helped move the Internet into the modern age. Yes, Web 2.0 startups host my data. And they host others people’s data too. And I and others sign licenses and privacy agreements with those companies so that we can collaborate. I guess I could ask others to put their data on my servers, but most would probably want some sort of license and privacy agreements with me. I’m a business person, not a software company. I’d rather let the professionals manage the licensing and such so I can get my job done.