Andrea Ciffolilli, The Economics of Open Source Hijacking and Declining Quality of Digital
Information Resources: A Case for Copyleft, Free/Open Source Research Community, April 2004. Abstract: "The economics of information goods suggest the need of institutional intervention to
address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by
high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution.
Solutions to the appropriation issue, such as copyright, are supposed to guarantee an
incentive for innovative activities at the price of few vices marring their rationale. In the case of digital information resources, apart from conventional inefficiencies, copyright
shows an extra vice since it might be used perversely as a tool to hijack and privatise
collectively provided open source and open content knowledge assemblages. Whilst the
impact of hijacking on open source software development may be uncertain or uneven,
some risks are clear in the case of open content works. The paper presents some evidence
of malicious effects of hijacking in the Internet search market by discussing the case of
The Open Directory Project. Furthermore, it calls for a wider use of novel institutional
remedies such as copyleft and Creative Commons licensing, built upon the paradigm of
copyright customisation." (Source: Marcus Zillman via beSpacific)
Posted by
Garrett at 5/14/2004 04:39:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
