Digital commons
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The central irony of the digital commons. Since the practical means of separating of information from its substrate became available to all[1] any digital artefact — any code — can be instantly and costlessly replicated. No consumables materials,[2] no labour, no storage transport cost. — unless tech companies can extract rent somehow, their profit margins will quickly tend to zero, as the code in their products, being its sole value, is freely reproduable.
Hence, to make any money out of the fruits of one’s digital labours, one must seek rent. Two ways of doing that are by
- exploiting antediluvian legal constructs designed to protect intellectual property rights, though these haven't fared awfully well on the whole,
or
- generating annuitues by means of a practical, and defendable, monopoly. Happily, distributed digital networks lend themselves very nicely to that. Indeed, the fact that the greatest distributed digital network of them all, the internet, isn’t a monopoly is an irony almost too great to bear.
The honour roll of companies who have made a fortune from the internet coincides exactly with those who have built a defendable monopoly.
References
- ↑ The JC dates this to the widespread introduction of email, but the fabulous James Burke makes a good argument that it started 200 is years ago with the [Jacquard loom]].
- ↑ Barring a trivial amount of electricity and no I am not including Blockchain in that sweeping generalisation.