Keith Moore wrote:
> And the downside of information capitalism is that it facilitates
> control over the many by those few who possess "crucial" pieces of
> information - the information produced by everyone else is nearly
> useless in comparison. Ironically, what you call "information
> capitalism" encourages centralized control.
I think we are looking at this in two different ways.
Which of the following two options is more likely to feed starving
children in Africa:
1) the Africans produce millions of pieces of valuable IPR
2) we take Steamboat Willie away from Disney, making it valueless
to everybody
Clearly, allowing people to generate their own value is going to improve
the global lot moreso than mugging the IPR barons.
Where you cite centralized control, that control only exists because
people are not improving their own portfolios. If everybody who was
capable of doing so built up their own IPR collections, then the
centralized wealth would not be so disproportionate.
On the other hand, if everybody has none, then the benefits go to the
distributors and those who can leverage the material for other purposes,
while the creators are at a disadvantage. That direction abosultely favors
an imbalance, and it rewards the exploiters vs the creators.
--
Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/