Book by Yochai Benkler
A comprehensive and exhaustive book about the open movement (free software, wikipedia, blogging, flickr, creative commons, crowdsourcing etc) of which LibriVox is an enthusiastic member. Not for the faint-hearted, this book is dense, big and academic in approach, but refreshingly rigourous, with significant attention paid to law, economics, and history as well as softer moral/ethical considerations. The history of radio (fascinating) & laws around who can broacast what; net neutrality; patatent law and innovation; SETI@home; copyright law; and much more all get detailed treatment.
This book really brings everything together, and for anyone serious about collaborative approach to solving problems, this one is a must. Especially for you academics out there. But everyone else should read it too.
You can get the book online here, in pdf, html, or wiki formats … or you can even buy it at amazon. There’s an extensive wiki too, to contribute to the project, here.
My rating: stars
Thanks for calling attention to this resource – I’ve long been looking for a single source (yes, I am that lazy) primer on the issue that brings together the legal, economic, and ethical considerations at issue. I’m trying to come up with an understanding of how open source models can be applied to a variety of sectors…
Hi Hippie, there are some others well worth reading (wikinomics, long tail, free culture, wisdom of crowds)… but benkler’s is the gold standard for in-depth analysis of the whole thing.
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