[p2p-research] A Penny for your P2P Thoughts

[Stan Rhodes]

"Ideally" the information commons (you mention a physics article,
which is a nonrival good--information) is storage, distribution, and
facilitation of an open market provided by publicly-owned
infrastructure.  The open market enables the peers.  In the open
market, "contributors" to the information commons are providing a
service: content creation.  Should you take money when offered it by
another for your service?  Absolutely.

To see my underlying thoughts as a previous, more primitive assessment
of how this happens, please do a search for
"Creation of information must be treated as a service. The system must
enable compensation for creation."
in this discussion: http://p2pfoundation.net/Talk:Peer_Trust_Network_Project

It's roughly a 3rd of the way down the page.

-- Stan

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Should a P2P devotee take money for a contribution to the commons?
>
> Let's imagine a commons was somehow endowed...like a university.  Could it
> be appropriate for the commons to pay for open contributions or is the very
> idea of "open" simply outside the concept of getting some dosh for day's
> drollery?
>
> I say take the buck, and perhaps even spend the buck--why shouldn't
> wikipedia pay a great physicist for an article?  It is perfectly fine to be
> paid for work and there is no crisis in calling something P2P if it has a
> bit of the old modes attached.
>
> One thinks of property trusts for real estate as a possible analogy.
> Wouldn't it be nice in the post-life estates of certain academics or artists
> if they gave their portfolio of intellectual properties to an open trust as
> a P2P "gift?"  Surely it has already happened...perhaps many times.  And if
> it is OK to die and pass something into a commons, why not have it be OK to
> live and sell something to a commons?  Who loses?
>
> Imagine that quaint New England town that surrounded the common grazing
> grounds with houses.  Would it be so wrong if they paid the fellow living
> next door for a little expansion turf?  Of course not.
>
> People get edgy about markets--pro and con.  They get religious.  P2P ought
> not to be of any given creed with regard to markets.  What P2P ought to be
> is open, about responsibility and sharing, and interested in general
> advancement.  It is about growing an open access commons for
> non-hierarchical interactions and uses.  How it gets to these ends can be a
> manifold story.
>
> Ryan
>
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