Nice overview article in The Guardian, about the terms and conditions used in the videosharing services. It notes that MySpace now recognizes the creator’s ownership, but MTV does not. We quote the specific paragraphs on T&C’s only, but the article is worth reading for its context.

MySpace: “People posting content are informed they retain ultimate ownership, but have given MySpace a licence to use content without payment. The Ts &Cs also specify the licence “will terminate at the time you remove your content”. MySpace agrees the licence does not grant it the right to sell the content, nor to distribute it “outside of MySpace services”.

MTV Flux: “people who upload to MTV Flux forfeit payment and relinquish their rights “in perpetuity”. That is, forever. Removing your content doesn’t revoke MTV’s right to use it.

MTV holds the right to “commercially exploit, host, store, copy, distribute, modify, edit, incorporate into other material, and/or otherwise treat in any way” content. Providers to MTV Flux also waive “moral rights” to material – a lawyer’s way of saying MTV does not have to give the author credit. MTV doesn’t plan to be quite so tough as its terms allow. It does identify content creators, and if you leave MTV Flux, you need only give MTV seven days’ notice, as content might have been scheduled to air on an MTV TV channel or mobile service.”

BBC and Channel 4: choose a Creative Commons (creativecommons.org) licence regime

Release of Report on ‘UK Artists, Copyright and Creative Commons’

Click on the following link to download the report:

The Arts Council England and OpenBusiness.cc announce the release of a
report, which represents the results of a six-month study into artists’
attitudes towards copyright, creativity and alternative licensing
practises, in particular Creative Commons (CC). Although the number of
UK artists using open licensing has been growing for the last decade
there had been no investigation into how or why such licences were
being used.

This is a timely report which tells us something about how artists are
increasingly using the law in innovative ways to distribute their work.
It flags up the need for further research into the increasing use of
open content licences not just by individuals but also by organisations
and agencies worldwide and we are delighted to have provided some funds
to allow Open Business to begin this analysis.

The focus of the report is twofold:

• to investigate how artists working in a digital environment view
copyright, which structures many commercial relationships, but often
prohibits sharing, copying and the easy adaptation of existing artistic
works.

• to examine why some artists use Creative Commons licences, which, in
contrast, facilitate sharing, copying and, depending on the terms of
the particular licence used, allow derivative use for commercial or
non-commercial purposes.

The report suggests that one key reason for artists’ using CC is that
they perceive standard copyright as too complex and costly. CC licences
are an effective and practical tool for new media artists, who adapt
existing work. Artists are also using CC to exploit network effects and
to better market their creative work. CC is still used by an
avant-garde of mainly rather young artists; more than 140,000 websites
in the UK make use of such licences.

The survey points towards a possible confusion between evolving working
practices that involve re-use and remix and an individual caution about
their own work. In general it can be summarised that artists are in
need of simpler and more appropriate guidelines, which might be
provided not only by the law, but also through funding and policy
bodies such as Arts Council England.

Though based on a total misreading of both the work of Benkler (The Wealth of Nations) and myself (The P2P Manifesto), there is a stimulating analysis of our work on peer production in the blog Artifice and Agency, presumable from a student of Dale Carrico, Ben N.

Here is my response, I’m only quoting the parts to which I’m explicitely referring, so please read the full text as well.

Discussion: peer production and the market

Ben N: In reading the works by Bauwens and Benkler, it is clear that they both see the arrival of peer-to-peer production as the heralding of a new era. However, both writers have radically different ideas about how peer-to-peer should work, and what a p2p world would look like. Putting Bauwens and Benkler in a dialogue exposes these extreme differences and suggests that their works are influenced more by predominant political philosophies than an interest in developing a new mode of economic production while refusing to give proper credit to the free market roots on which peer-to-peer production would inevitably need to rely on.

My response: First of all, thanks to Ben N. for taking the time to read and compare the 2 approaches. However, I have to disagree from the start, in almost all my writings, I stress both points at the same time: nl. that peer to peer is indeed a new mode of production, and that at present, peer production and the market are mutually dependent and interconnected. If the author were to read the blog, newsletter or tags (del.icio.us/mbauwens/Open-Source-Commercialization; del.icio.us/mbauwens/P2P-Business ), he would see that not only to acknowledge that, but it is central to the research we are undertaking. Not only that, but even in the future vision of the political economy, the role of the market is explicitely recognized, albeit we favour peer-informed markets (i.e. forms of the market which are not predicated upon endless growth and usage of limited natural resources, and not exclusively based on power relationships). The difference with Benkler is I believe one of degree. Benkler sees peer production as an integral part of a market economy, while I believe there is a strong possibility that peer production may become the core of a new economy, with the market as subsystem. Another issue I want to stress is: yes, P2P is co-dependent on the market, but the opposite is also true: the market is increasingly dependent on social innovation and participation; on the free use value created by peer production, which the market subsequently and until today, insufficiently achieves to monetize. In any case, the characterization that I refuse to give proper credit to the market roots, is a mistaken interpretation.

Ben N. Bauwens’ piece consistently tries to delineate peer-to-peer as a third mode of production, but clearly aligns itself with a Marxist ideology, borrowing heaving from socialist philosophy in his description of a utopian peer-to-peer system. Bauwens is not subtle about his alignment, calling upon Marx’s writings on the Birmingham industrial complex in the first paragraph. Bauwens constantly disavows the market, stating that peer-to-peer should work to “…make use-value freely accessible on a universal basis, through new common property regimes…” Later on, when discussing how peer-to-peer production can transcend capitalism, Bauwens makes a seemingly passing comment that “… P2P could be expanded and sustained through the introduction of universal basic income…”, making anyone to the right of the International Socialist Organization on the political spectrum potentially quiver at the thought of wealth redistribution through a government allowance.

Response: It is of course true that both Benkler and Bauwens are influenced by pre-existing political philosophies, but these sources are far from being so unequivocal as stated. It is clear that Benkler is more clearly influenced by liberal political and economic philosophies, and that I’m using some Marxist concepts. My own philosophical history is quite complex, and to pigeonhole my writings as an alignement on Marxist ideology is erroneous (as the ideology of the socialist systems, I explicitely disavow it). However, I use it in a meta-paradigmatic fashion, drawing from different sources and different toolboxes. That peer production make use-value available on a universal basis, is not a wish, but a description of the factual situation today, and again does not mean, see above, that I constantly disavow the market. The universal income is not an extreme left idea, and comes in many varieties, right down from the negative income tax idea of Milton Friedman. It’s proponents therefore include ‘right’ libertarians, left libertarians, Christian-democrats in Europe, and even the extreme right (Le Pen in France, if I’m not mistaken). Of course, it is not mainstream, but it exists in all political families, makes periodic comebacks in political discussions, and they are a variety of official reports on the topic. The universal income is not a governmental handout, nor a means of redistribution, but rather an acknowledgement of the use value that is generated by civil society for the market; a guarantee that more of such use value can continue to be generated, to the benefit of the market, amongst other things. This being said, I’m not hung up on the universal income at all.

Ben N. In discussing the transcendence, however, Bauwens follows in the model of Marx in accepting that some tenets of capitalism will continue to be pervasive. One of the key characteristics of peer-to-peer for Bauwens is that “…autonomous agents can freely determine their behavior and linkages without the intermediary of obligatory hubs…” The market is not mentioned here, but the passage suggests that the p2p system is possibly open to strong market forces through the natural demands of the network users. Later, Bauwens admits that “… [despite] significant differences, P2P and the capitalist market are highly interconnected. P2P is dependent on the market and the market is dependent on P2P.” To the bitter end, however, Bauwens seems set on removing the market from as much of the system as possible

Response: Not removing the market ‘as much as possible’, but letting it operate freely wherever it’s most appropriate; favoring truly free markets over monopolistic anti-markets; not letting the ‘market’ destroying the biosphere, nor letting it create extreme social inequality; regulating it when necessary. The author misses my point, i.e. that there are at least 3 modes of production, state planning, market, non-reciprocal peer production, that each has its place, but that, as we move to an increasing dominance of immaterial production, where peer production is highly efficient, and this is what Benkler has demonstrated through is careful cost-benefit analysis.

Ben N. It is important to note that while Benkler places democratization on a pedestal and sees peer-to-peer production as an avenue to improving democratization in society, Benkler does not promise a utopia in the way that Bauwens refers to it. There may be a better world, but it is certainly not a planned utopia.

Response: I disavow any sense of a ‘planned utopia’. Ben N. probably refers to the fact that I see non-reciprocal peer production becoming a meta-system, while Benkler does not do so, but that doesn’t qualify anything as a ‘utopia’ (though I do favor ‘concrete utopias’, i.e. the replication where possible of proven experiments). P2P theory proceeds from an analysis of the present. It notes that P2P social practices are emerging throughout the social field, and that they are highly efficient for certain reasons in specific circumstances. So, it aims to start as an empirical social theory; the next step is to acknowledge that because it is based on the free engagement of equipotential individuals, it is more congruent with certain human values, and therefore merits to be supported; and finally, because of the second, ethical, conclusion, it proceeds to think about tactics and strategies. It does not promise any utopia, neither now nor in the future. And of course, it is the opposite of planned. As a third mode of production and governance, it is equally removed from central planning (though it is co-dependent on the state), as it is from the market (again: on which it is co-dependent, but that doesn’t mean it is co-identical)

Ben N: Benkler’s insistence of separating of market systems from peer-to-peer systems represents the most significant failure of these two writers that is discovered in their dialogue. Neither Benkler nor Bauwens adequately stress the importance of market forces in the new peer-to-peer system, nor do the writers address the fact that the entire infrastructure on which a new peer-to-peer system would work – computers, network servers, wires, etc. – would need to be developed in a market-based economy. The companies in the economy would seemingly have the control over the system that Benkler and Bauwens explicitly condemn and would potentially stand in the way of a peer-to-peer development shift.

Response: After reading such a misreading of both Benkler and myself, both of whom explicitly acknowledge the role of the market, one can only conclude that Ben N. has read our works with explicitly ideological lenses, one must surmise from the libertarian free market variety. This is why he fails to see that his own conclusion, is in fact what we both have been saying. Ben N. seems to have read our works as a bull in front of a red rag, getting enervated because the holy word of market is not used in every paragraph. In his conclusion, he therefore repeats our own conclusions, that while it is rooted in the market system (though I would phrase that differently, stressing the co-dependency of both), it is also standing on its own …

Ben N. indeed concludes:

”More than anything, a dialogue between the two pieces suggests the need for a comprehensive and moderated philosophy for the future of peer-to-peer production that recognizes its strong roots in a free trade system while standing on its own as an entirely new economic mode.”

Clay Shirky has made a new and important contribution to the debate on the roles of experts vs. free contributors in building knowledge, as it applies to the Wikipedia vs. Citizendium controversy.

You can read it here, and it is strongly recommended. Shirky focuses on the issue of cost, i.e. costs of contributions (Wikipedia) vs. costs of contributors (Citizendium and Brittanica), as one of the key reasons that the Wikipedia is a better fit.

I would like another argument: power. If we look at knowledge production through the admittedly broad sweep of the premodern/modern/postmodern distinction, I think we can generalize the following. In the premodern hierarchical networks, one power center tends to control the knowledge (the King, the Church, the Guilds), which flows from the top down on a need to know basis. Knowledge is considered a secret to be protected. That changes with modernity, when the Frency Encyclopedists (Diderot) decide that the knowledge of the guilds should be there for everyone. Modernity is based on decentralized networks, and competing power centers. Power is devolved. To the question on how to validate knowledge, decentralized credentializing institutions are created. I would argue that power is pretty much a top down affair still, and in many ways, we enter the era of the rule of the expert. The doctor is master over our health, the teacher the master of our knowledge, the scientists decide what is true.

My overriding thesis would be that as distributed networks become dominant, and they are defined by bottom-up processes whereby hubs are voluntary, instead of a top down devolution of power to many power centers, then the whole issue of power changes as well.

As connected individuals, we are no longer dependent on the power of our doctor alone. They are many other ways to obtain information; we can consult our peers on their experience. We still need doctors, they are trained to know more, but they start becoming interpreters of the knowledge, partners to the community; in education, there are now many more ways to obtain knowledge, and we can learn/exchange with our peers. The school becomes just one of the places where we learn, and we are not dependent on it alone. So the teacher, the educational system, becomes a partner and helper of the process of learning.

To build a Wikipedia of knowledge, we no longer absolutely needed, were no longer dependent on the experts, and we just did it.

But does that mean that experts have no role? They still have important relative roles, because they are trained and more specialized. But as in the other cases, they are partners, not masters. So how can they best serve the community?

In my opinion, a dual structure might be a good solution to the Wikipedia. The free contributors would still build the knowledge, unimpeded by any censoring power of experts. The experts could have their own area, and build advice pages, pretty much in the same way as the free contributors are building theirs. In such pages, they could point out errors, provide additional material and interpretations. That way, users would have an additional option, next to the normal page, they would have this added perspective. Contributors would similarly be enriched through the access to this additional expert material. The experts would be freeer to create their own material, unemcumbered by any dumbing down process. But let’s have no illusion, the expert pages would be just as multi-perspectival and contentious as the normal pages.

In conclusion, any defense or return to the old credentialist way of doing things, are doomed to failure, because of the cost issues identified by Shirky, and because of the fundamentally different power structure, my argument above. So we need a new mental model: peers building value, constructing knowledge, working at their well-being; these are then in need of the more qualified advice of the experts, who have a new role of servant leadership.

Book: Getting Things Done. Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy. By Gerard Fairtlough. Triarchy Press.
In this second and last excerpt, the author teases out the differences between heterarchy and responsible autonomy:

For more information, see Triarchypress
Gerard Fairtlough:

Responsible autonomy will sometimes lead to disputes, for instance about the fairness of critique or interference on matters that are supposed to be within the capsule of an autonomous unit. There are external models for dispute resolution, like the law courts, arbitration procedures and the ombudsman system. At present, organizations generally use hierarchical methods to resolve disputes – the boss steps in and settles the matter. But it is perfectly possible to work out independent, heterarchical means of arbitration or judgement by third parties within the organization. Reliable methods for resolving disputes are part of effective encapsulation.

Summarizing the advantages of responsible autonomy: simplicity and speed of action, the creative potential of a CES and the appeal that autonomy has for many people. The advantages depend on good encapsulation and proper critique.

Heterarchy Compared with Responsible Autonomy.

These two ways of getting things done are similar in being non-hierarchical, but in other respects they are quite different. Heterarchy involves continuous interactions between individuals and sub-units in an organization as they decide what to do and how to coordinate their actions. The sheer density of this communication might require a lot of time and effort – a possible disadvantage for heterarchy. Responsible autonomy, if set up properly, means that sub-units are much more self-sufficient and that interaction between them is much less intense.

Each one of the three ways of getting things done is what sociologists call ‘an ideal type’. This means the concept is not encountered in its pure form in real organizations. For instance, no hierarchy, however dominant, can control everything. Likewise, because boundaries cannot in practice be drawn in a totally clear way, complete autonomy is never possible. And elements of hierarchy or autonomy will always creep into a heterarchical organization. So every actual organization is a mixture of hierarchy, heterarchy and autonomy – but in widely varying proportions.

All the same, the three concepts are valuable for gaining an understanding and discussing the different ways of getting things done in organizations. A full understanding of the three ways, and how they can be blended, will enable great improvements in organizations.

Are There Only Three Ways?

I am frequently asked why there are only three ways of getting things done in organizations. Well, I am not able to prove there are no further ways, but no one has been able to show me another. Various suggestions can be made. For instance, an organization might get things done through the love and respect that its members have for each other. But I don’t think love and respect are sufficient as ways of getting things done. They can, of course, have a profound influence on the culture of an organization, but in themselves they do not provide system or leadership.

Is there something like a P2P-lifestyle?

If there is, it would be to trend to replace a reliance on pure commercial exchange and the commodification and financialization of daily life, to a reliance on other forms of exchange, amongst peers.

We have started monitoring this trend through our wiki entry on Peer to Peer Exchanges, and through 2 Delicious tags, one on P2P Exchanges, and one specifically on P2P-Travel.

The latter covers sites like hospitalityclub.org, couchsurfing.com, globalfreeloaders.com and place2stay.net, which are often free, serving only as middlemen and offering tips on how to find successful matches.

One of such intrepid travellers using such services is Clare Mulvany, who is writing a book on Exceptional Lives, showing young people that there are alternatives from the corporate life. She met many interesting people on the way, has a lively blog with fascinating stories, and visited us as well.

We compiled a list of key podcasts amongst the hundreds we’ve been indexing in our wiki.

The complete list is at our directory here.

Open Source/Free Software

Benjamin Mako Hill on Defining Freedom

P2P Business

Chris Anderson on the Long Tail; Clayton Christensen on Open Source and Innovation in Business; Doc Searls on Self-Forming Markets; Doc Searls on the Intention Economy; Geoffrey Moore on Open Source and Capitalism; Jonathan Schwartz on the Age of Participation; Michael Goldhaber on the Attention Economy; Yochai Benkler on the Wealth of Networks

P2P Cooperation

Clay Shirky on Moderation Patterns; Hazel Henderson on the coming age of worldwide cooperation; Howard Rheingold on Cooperation Theory; James Surowieki on the pitfalls of the Wisdom of Crowds

P2P Culture and Sociology

Danah Boyd and Douglas Rushkoff on MySpace; David Sifry on Technorati; Douglas Rushkoff on the New Digital Rennaissance; Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia; Lawrence Lessig Podcasts on Free Culture; Pat Kane on the Play Ethic

P2P Cyber-Rights

Contrarians on Eternal Copyright; Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights and DRM

P2P Education & Learning

David Wiley on the Open Education Movement; Doc Searls on Free and Open Source in Education; Exploring Wikis in Education; Stephen Downes on Connective Knowledge

P2P Epistemology

David Swedlow on Beyond Folksonomies; David Weinberger on Tagging and Folksonomies

P2P Media

Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism; Interview with Jeff Jarvis on the Loss of Control by the Media; James Boyle on Re-Inventing the Gatekeeper

P2P Politics

MacKenzie Wark on the Hacker Manifesto and Class

P2P Technology

Adam Greenfield on Ubiquitous Computing; Bruce Sterling on the Internet of Things; Conversation with Ward Cunningham

For those who missed our early days, here’s a selection of our theoretical interventions during the month of March.

P2P and the New Age movement

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=144

 
The new age movement is dead, has it left any positive legacy? I argue that it has.

The Library of the Future: The Catalog <is> the library

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=138

 
As a former librarian/cybrarian, here’s my vision of the future library.

Peer to Peer as a theory for social change

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=133

 
An attempt to explain the underlying politics of our endeavour.

The Germ Theory of Social Change

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=132

 
The vision from the Oekonux people, on how free software is the germ form of the new society.

Kevin Carson on the Counter-Economy

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=130

His vision on markets, cooperatives in the context of a counter-economy

Peer-informed markets: the fair trade principle

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=129

The ideas of the French economist Maurice Decaillot

P2P and the cooperative movement

URL = blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=122

How do they relate?

We failed to mention a flurry of debate around Abundance economics, which started after a lecture by Chris Anderson of the Long Tail fame.

Ethan Zuckermann reports on the lecture here and his summary is worth reading in full.

It mentions the conclusion of Chris on what changes when abundance becomes the rule:

- In the past, we built business cases based on ROI. Now we build it and build the business afterwards.

- Scarcity is top-down, abundance is bottom-up. Instead of command and control, it’s out of control.

In the original blog entry on this topic by Chris Anderson himself, he cites David Hornik, a venture capitalist:

"The basic idea is that incredible advances in technology have driven the cost of things like transistors, storage, bandwidth, to zero. And when the elements that make up a business are sufficiently abundant as to approach free, companies appropriately should view their businesses differently than when resources were scarce (the Economy of Scarcity). They should use those resources with abandon, without concern for waste. That is the overriding attitude of the Economy of Abundance — don’t do one thing, do it all; don’t sell one piece of content, sell it all; don’t store one piece of data, store it all. The Economy of Abundance is about doing everything and throwing away the stuff that doesn’t work. In the Economy of Abundance you can have it all."

Ross Dawson adds some further comments.

If I may add my five cents though, I do think at this stage the debate is rather superficial, as it fails to distinguish between true scarcity and abundance, and pseudo-scarcity and pseudo-abundance. There is for example the false scarcity induced by copyright, and the fake material abundance that exists because of market distortians, which makes some physical resources look abundant, but they are only so because true costs are dumped to nature and the communities.

The strength of the Bazaar mode of the free software (and peer production generally) mode of production, is that people can work passionately at what they do best, when they feel best about doing so. But not all work in a software project is pleasant, yet it needs to be done, and sometimes development needs leadership and vision.

In a much talked about article in the FOSS community, from Patrick MacFarland at the Free Software Magazine, the argument is made that hybrid modes of production, using a measure of centralized ‘Cathedral’ like management (the metaphor is from the landmark book of Eric Raymond, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which contrasted centralized and decentralized modes of software development), might actually be better.

Excerpt:

"As a strength, this allows any individual to hack on any feature, any program, any anything and scratch his/her proverbial itch on whatever is bothering him. In this way, we often get interesting solutions to interesting problems. The worst bugs are fixed, the most wanted features are added, and the most annoying of either are dealt with in a quick and painful hacking session that often involves swearing like a drunken pirate.

However, as a weakness, this also means that leadership in some projects is non-existant or ineffectual. In Cathedral-style projects, your not-so-friendly neighborhood PHB (fueled by the lies from various ugly hunch-backed minions), although wrong 120% of the time, says what goes in a project. The PHB’s vision is corrupt; but none-the-less, it still is a vision.

Now, some Bazaar-style projects do manage to wing it fine. The Linux Kernel itself is a good example, with Linus Torvalds acting as a benevolent overlord. He allows just the right amount of free-form hacking to go into the kernel, and refuses to commit patches that don’t provide 100% useful content.

Other projects, however, are glowing examples of what not to do. GNOME, sadly, is one of those projects. Backed by the Free Software Foundation and the FOSS community as a whole, the GNOME project for many years just added lots and lots of feature creep and otherwise unnamed bloat. They seem to be digging themselves out from under that, but they have a long road ahead of themselves.

The GNOME project lacked true vision for those years, and feature creep and other long term development problems rushed in to fill that hole. Problem is, many projects are just like GNOME. Incidentally, few Cathedral-style projects suffer from lack of vision: those that do simply die off and are never heard from again. Bazaar-style development allows projects to be in a zombie state for long periods of time, where it is vastly expensive for a Cathedral-style project to do the same.

Another example: for years, XFree86 languished under the control of David Dawes (who also proved earlier on that a benevolent overlord actually has to be a benevolent), and Keith Packard had to go ahead and fork XFree86 (producing X.org, the now de facto X server for most Linux distributions) to solve this issue. Not only did Dawes lack vision, he got in the way of everyone who did have vision."

(Copyright information – This blog entry is (C) Copyright, Patrick McFarland, 2004-2006. Unless a different license is specified in the entry’s body, the following license applies: "Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved and appropriate attribution information (author, original site, original URL) is included".)