[LINK] Wide Open - Open source methods and their future potential

[Deus Ex Machina]

Auer, Karl James [karl.auer at id.ethz.ch] wrote:
> > not true. the overwhelming number of things in the commons 
> > have no value or value below transaction costs.
> 
> "Value" doesn't mean "what it's worth in cash". How much is air worth?
> Bugger all - until there's none left to breathe. So although you may be
> right about *some* things in the commons, don't generalise to *all*
> things in the commons, digital or otherwise.

value reflects the current circumstances. since we have at least 2.5x10^9 cubic km
of air, the value of any perticular cubic meter is very low. the value
of all of it as a unit is very high. but for all intents and purposes
thats irrelevant for our daily lives. since we are not about to run out
of air and we are not in any cicurmstnace where thats about to happen
there is no point looking at a contrived scenario where that may occur.

should we be moving to a scenario where we do have to worry
about air then the value of any perticular bit would rise dramatically.


> > The uniqueness factor is eradicated because anyone can source the
> > original at zero cost and virtually zero effort.
> 
> Andy Warhol didn't seem to mind. Fact is, *most* "found object" art,
> whether plastic or otherwise, uses material available to anyone, at zero
> or near zero cost. The whole *point* of most such art is to focus on
> some property emerging from the arrangement of the objects rather than
> from the objects themselves; that's where the originality is. The
> "uniqueness factor" of the objects themselves is irrelevant in
> practically all found object art I have ever come across. So I think the
> artists being quoted were right up themselves, however that's not
> uncommon, even for non-artists.

warhol did do something unique. and there is the problem that once its been
done the value drops. I think found art appealed to contrarians and
extreme artisitic fringe. it was never going to develop much real value
aside from the intial novelty. likewise with lessig.

> > It is virtually impossible for anything of real value to arise from a
> > free for all ocean of zero or next to zero value. Anything of 
> > real value that arise from the dark ocean of Creative Commons soon 
> > becomes consumed and looses its uniqueness because there are no
> property 
> > rights attached to it which helps maintain its uniqueness.
> 
> You are sort of right, but "virtually impossible" is wildly overstating
> it. Pretty much all musicians in the western tradition use the same
> scales, noone seems to think that patenting middle C would be a good
> idea, to up the value of songs containing it. Noone seems to want to
> patent "37 centimetres", which would make things that long very
> valuable, no doubt. Some things can give rise to value or enable the
> creation of valuable things *because* of their ubiquity - and standards
> are a good example. It's that sort of thing that the digital commons
> enables. Think of it as a value-creating *platform* rather than a
> repository of valuable things.
> Uniqueness is one property that things can have; there are a lot of
> other properties they may have, whose value (not only in your "cash"
> sense) isn't adversely affected by them being universally available.
> There is also the increasing difficulty of finding stuff out there. Just
> as we value the original oil more than the later copies, the person who
> *first* uses a found thing has won - in a sense *more* so if they are
> then accorded the honour of being copied. The same is as true of the
> digital world as the analogue world.

standards dont end up in CC and dont come about from bits and peices of
stuff in CC. I was specifically refering to CC. I cant see CC as a
platform for anything, other then for partial retaining of rights. anything
that has all its rights given away becomes for all intents and puposes
worthless.

what makes some commons useful as you say is a platform for developing
further stuff that has value. for example research. for
commons to be useful they must be able to be privatised or lead to
privatisation. and until they start approaching the path of privatisation
they have little value. research that has no effect on our everyday lives
it has only potential value.

the problem I have with CC is that the underlying insinuation is that
creative things can have value with all rights expressly striped. rights create
value. striping rights removes value. 

looking at OSS. GLP imo by enforcing a striping of rights has itself now become its own
worst enemy, effectively ensuring that few if any commercial products will
fork by modifying gpl source. 

prosperity comes about from the freedom to create rights, not just from
unbridled freedom.

Vic