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The Economist On The Economics of Sharing
RCulpepper writes "The Economist, reliably the most insightful English-language news publication, discusses the economics of sharing, from OSS programmers' sharing time, to P2P users' sharing disk space and bandwidth. " True indeed (about The Economist, I have to remember to renew my subscription); one of the main supports for the article comes from Yochai Benkler latest piece, which is excellent.
WooHoo!
Back in my college days, I once asked my boss if I could pay rent for some unused offices. He didn't like the idea very much.
It seems to me that it just described that way it is without some worthwhile analyis what motivates people to share or why should be people reading economiast concerned
If you read the article it describes that people are acting their own self interest. Donation of time and intellectual resources are not purely charitable, people do them for personal gain (fame and recognition by peers, experience that increases their value in paying jobs, and enjoyment)
"The reason often seems to be that writing open-source software increases the authors' prestige among their peers or gains them experience that might help them in the job market, not to mention that they also find it fun."
It also describes that people are willing to share tangible resources if they have an over abundanace (bandwidth, clock cycles) and a means to distribute with negligable costs (internet).
This sharing hasn't translated over to other goods and services outside of IT because either the goods are not abundant enough (cars), or the cost of distribution is too high (food)
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Remember that we're talking about economic theory here. As with any theory, it's based on a set of formal definitions. You can consult any introductory textbook for coverage in depth. The article gives a short, intuitive definition for "non-rival good" by suggesting that, "Your use of it does not interfere with my use."
A textbook would go to greater length, for example pointing out that a definition such as this concerns inherent properties of a thing in economic terms.
It's obvious that legal effects, on the other hand, are not inherently associated with goods at all. The legal system, first of all, has a completely different theoretical basis, and second, is related primarily to actions, not things.
With those points in mind, let's look at what happens when information is shared. The actual information which I possess is inherently the same, whether or not you also possess it. Got that? So economic theory classifies it as a "non-rivalrous good".
Of course there could be consequences to me in your knowing this information, but that attaches to what you do with it, not to the information itself. What your actions then signify in law depend on a particular body of law, without reference to which the discussion has no meaning. So for example we would have to decide whether to talk about specific US copyright law as enacted in 2005, the traditions of English common law which began circa 1066, or Socratic notions of civil law circa 400 BCE.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Wow has this story grown. Even Rosalind never claimed to discover DNA. First of all, DNA was discovered a long time early. What Watson and Crick did was discover it's structure. They used information from Rosalind who did the xray crystal stuff and which told them it was helical. That would never have been very exciting without true genius of Watson and Crick figuring out how DNA could have a helical structure. Sure she should have gotten more credit, but to say she discovered DNA is so wrong it's silly.
As a broke college student myself, a simple solution to this quandary is this: Get to know the employees and manager of a local, small, bookstore. Ask about magazines and how they get rid of the extra stock when the new stuff comes in. Most bookstores "strip" the covers off and toss the magazines, and many will look the other way if employees want to take a few of the magazines home for themselves or friends. This method won't get you endless supplies of everything on the rack, but you could probably get a copy of the economist and one or two others each month rather easily (sure you'll be a month behind, but that's not so bad really).