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Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As P2P gives rise to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of governance, and a third mode of property, it is poised to overhaul our political economy in unprecedented ways. This essay aims to develop a conceptual framework ('P2P theory') capable of explaining these new social processes.

One of the abiding debates about the Internet is the extent to which it represents a step change in the way that societies - and economies - will function in the future. What is undeniable is that the Web has sparked a growing number of "free" and "open" movements that challenge current economic models - including the Free and Open Source Software movements, the Open Access Movement, Open Source Journalism, and Creative Commons. Many also believe that the peer-to-peer (P2P) phenomenon has significant implications for the traditional top-down model on which modern societies are based.

Watch Yochai Benkler's talk on TED.com

In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it.

"The Long Tail, in a nutshell The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare."

You can download the whole book in one PDF:

This Wiki is an invitation to collaborate on building a learning and research environment based on Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Sharealike license.

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications.

"Im World Wide Web gibt es immer noch keinen zuverlässigen Markt für digitale Güter wie Texte, Töne, Bilder oder Bewegtbilder. Onlineunternehmer verschenken Content oder Infrastrukturleistungen, um sich bei den Nutzern mit dem Ziel einzuschmeicheln, über hohe Trafficraten Werbekunden anzuziehen. Für sie ist das WWW kein Marktplatz, sondern ein Marketingplatz. Wer allein auf Werbung und andere Querfinanziers als Online-Geschäftsmodell setzt und die Webgüter, die Dritte freiwillig oder unfreiwillig ins Netz stellen, missbraucht, zum Beispiel um in deren Umfeld Wer­bung zu schalten, ohne die Rechtebesitzer zu vergüten, handelt nicht nur illegal, sondern auch fahrlässig. Nullpreise arbeiten Online­monopolisten in die Hände, die eines Tages das Schicksal des Web beherrschen und in ihrem Sinne definieren können."

This dossier documents and brings together background materials for the international conference Economies of the Commons. This public working conference and its side programs address the remarkable cultural, educational and societal significance of the new types of audiovisual commons resources that are currently being created on the internet. Sustainable public access and enhanced opportunities for creative reuse of these resources are the particular focus of this conference and this web dossier.