The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

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Yale University Press, 2006 M01 1 - 515 pages

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment.


In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing--and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained--or lost--by the decisions we make today.

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Contents

Introduction A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge
1
The Networked Information Economy
29
Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation
35
Peer Production and Sharing
59
The Economics of Social Production
91
The Political Economy of Property and Commons
129
Individual Freedom Autonomy Information and Law
133
Political Freedom Part 1 The Trouble with Mass Media
176
Cultural Freedom A Culture Both Plastic and Critical
273
Justice and Development
301
Social Ties Networking Together
356
Policies of Freedom at a Moment of Transformation
379
The Battle Over the Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment
383
Conclusion The Stakes of Information Law and Policy
460
Notes
475
Index
491

Political Freedom Part 2 Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere
212

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About the author (2006)

Yochai Benkler is the Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Yale University.

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