Are Online Commons a Boon or a Threat to the Market System?
There is a simmering debate in certain tech circles that is starting to come to a boil. It concerns the significance of Web 2.0 to the political economy. Web 2.0, refers to websites like Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, among thousands of others, where people can self-organize themselves into communities and share stuff for free, without the blessings of a marketplace. Is this a boon or a threat to the market system? Is the information that people contribute to Web 2.0 sites the ultimate capitalist scam – because investors are able to seize control of, and make money from, work that the commoners contribute for free? Amazon elicits and compiles customer’s freely made product recommendations in order to stimulate more sales. Facebook uses its enormous database of personal information to sell to targeted advertisements and sophisticated demographic data to market research firms. MySpace and blog software makers make money by hosting people’s blogs and personal rants. By fxp via Flickr, unde
