Over at Sphere of Networks, I published a text that tries to give a simple overview of the workings of information production in the age of the internet, covering everything from free software to free culture. This article is a slightly modified version of another chapter of this text. This time I will show you how the internet enabled a new form of information production: commons-based peer productions, like Wikipedia or most free software today. What is free content and why is it so important to people collaborating over the internet?

Figure 1: Production of physical goods is mostly handled by the market while information also gets often produced on a voluntary basis. [Wikimedia Commons], [Flickr: Clare and Dave]

Non-market production

Non-market production plays a bigger role in our economy than often realized. Whether it’s a parent looking after the children the whole day or people just voluntarily helping each other, a lot can get done without money ever changing hands. It has also always been true that non-market mechanisms were much more important in the production of information than physical goods. There are no voluntary steel manufacturers and we don’t just pick up a new car for free because someone feels like producing one. Nonetheless, we rely on a large volume of information everyday that is produced on a voluntary basis. Non-governmental organizations and private foundations are dedicated to solving pressing issues the market doesn’t care about and the government hasn’t resources at hand to solve. In everyday life we obtain advice and information from colleagues about what film to watch or what road to drive and virtually all of our basic research is funded by the government or non-profit institutions. With computers and the internet readily available to millions of people, the means to producing and distributing information are now widely held throughout the population. Thus non-market behaviour is becoming central to how our information and culture is produced.

Non-market production plays a bigger role in our economy than often realized

As working hours are going down in the more economically developed countries, more spare time is available for voluntary activity. Through information and communication technology, these resources can be used more effectively as people have better access to existing information and have a medium through which they can express themselves, communicate and collaborate with others.

The highest motivation for work is usually thought to be money. However, we are motivated by a wide range of things. We look for social rewards like acknowledgments or higher social standing in our communities. We have intrinsic motivations like pleasure or personal satisfaction when we feel we have achieved something. Even small payments may undermine intrinsic motivations as we might prefer to work for free for a good cause rather than do the same work for a monetary reward. [1].

Peer production

Resources can be handled either as property or as a commons. Most physical objects and also land are usually considered property while for example the roads network, water or public services are shared within a community and are thus commons. Information is a non-rival good. That means that it can be used by more than one person at a time. For example: if I sit on a chair, nobody else can (comfortably!) sit on the same chair at the same time. But if I listen to a song, I don’t prevent someone else listening to it at the same time. When information is treated as property as opposed to a commons it is made scarce against its non-rival nature. Fewer people can profit from the existing information and as proprietary information can’t be legally reused to create new information, this ultimately hinders overall information production.

When information is treated as property as opposed to a commons it is made scarce against its non-rival nature

Through the internet, a new model of production has evolved which relies heavily on the sharing of information as a commons. It also works radically because it is decentralized. Everyone can drop by, participate and contribute in the domains that interest them personally the most—as opposed to centralized production, where some boss somewhere decides what gets done by whom. This decentralized collaborative production method in which the resources are organized as a commons is called commons-based peer production [2].