F2C: Critiquing Benkler's 'Wealth'
An Internet expert at the Freedom to Connect conference on Tuesday turned the tables on Yale Law School's Yochai Benkler by criticizing his book The Wealth of Networks. Benkler was the summit's cause célèbre the day before.
On Monday, he spoke about his tome, which states that new "networked information economy" allows individuals and groups to be more productive than commercial ventures. A handful of fellow pundits and audience-members cheered him on.
But Peter Swire, an Ohio State University high-tech legal scholar, argued that an "economic-ased objective is pragmatically useful" when analyzing the 21st century marketplace. "There are a thousand things I agree with in the book," but Benkler's chief thesis is not one of them.
The book's assertion that change depends on "social rather than proprietary market relations [is] a big claim," Swire said. He said he believes "the shift to non-market is not proven and likely to be substantially overstated."
Swire gave the domain name system as an example. It began with a collection of hobbyists but gave rise to a powerful commercial vehicle that is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. "It would be very surprising to have the domain name system we have now if individuals were doing it on a volunteer basis," he said.
The public discussion about Benkler's book continues on his wiki.
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