Paying Certain Members Not to Participate John Burkhardt writes: "This is ludicrous. First of all, its a real drag that the term "P2P" is becoming synonymous with piracy. This ZDNet article is another case in point. As soon as two computers exchange information they are essentially P2P. Basically a server is a peer that is always available, right? Also, how would a law like this be implemented? What about completely decentralized architectures like Groove? All our data is encrypted and there is no way that any media company can see that I'm dropping an MP3 file into a shared space. There is no way know where its going (as it should be!) So how will they propose to know this without sniffing around on my computer?"
First, I agree that we need to improve the P2P brand messaging so that it is associated with values people want like Messaging with their buddies, and ad hoc collaborations with coworkers in Groove, or sharing your opinions and longing you observations using Radio, MoviableType or other web log applications. P2P is about sharing Knowledge not Piracy. For better of worse Napster did for many people introduce them to the value of P2P computing. But now that we have other examples we need to create a new mental model and brand position for P2P solutions for real people.
Second, I think that Open computing needs to be articulated as in Open Standards and Open P2P platforms. Microsoft and their industry cluster are taking a huge risk by contemplating changing the rules of a community midstream with their Palladium proposal. Giving people a reason to look and evaluate other open platforms as options to their future P2P needs.
Third commend on John’s post and most alarming is that the people proposing and writing these laws essentially own politicians or at least the positions. Amendments to these laws are not written by aids of the politicians, they are written by the legal counsel of large corporations that have a vested interested and these amendments are then emailed or delivered to the aids of the positions as friendly clarifications or suggestions. These are the evils of access.
Lets look using Coleman’s definitions of fundamentals of social capital. Because of the high cost of getting elected Politicians take their positions on the network by leveraging via social capital both their embeddedness and their ability to bridge structural holes of the networks in ways that improve their position. From the start they owe favors to others who owe favors to others for help they received in obtaining their current place on the social network. There is a trade in favors. Both positive and negative accumulations or stocks in favors are created and destroyed. What is a Senate seat or Congressional seat if not a very powerful place on the social network that determines the outcome of social policy where the actors in the end will curry much favor and owe many depts.
Both the contributors and the politicians posses very powerful structural positions in the network and can leverage their relationships and indebtedness to generate and foster the cooperation they need to enrich their small social network. As consumers we may not benefit from nearly as much as they do. In some cases if the network does not contain connections to all those who’s social welfare function is determined by the outcome in that case negative consumption effects can take place. One example is that of Pollution credits. The idea behind pollution credits is that free market forces being directed to the problem of pollution would reduce pollution. However the four fundamentals of an ideal free market are not adequately complied with in the trade of pollution credits.
Four axioms of an ideal free market:
- A multitude of consumers and Producers trade in the market.
- Any market actor can trade in any commodity.
- There are no impediments to moving between commodities. This is the so-called "frictionless" aspect.
- There is perfect information in the marketplace. Information is uniformly distributed and exhaustive.
A quick look illustrates that the trade of Pollution credits is far from ideal free market mechanism. There is a small well connected group of players many who know eachother well involved in trade in the market. Not just anyone has pollution that needs to be sold so much for frictionless. There is nowhere close to uniform distribution of information. As we are discovering by watching the stock market reciently (the stock market is closer to an ideal free market system) when the fourth law is broken trust is lost and the money runs for the hills to find a safer less risky place to stay so it won't evaporate under the heat of transaction. In the case of pollution credits the laws of social capital dominate because it is who you know that determines whom you sell to, not the best price.
How can we counter this? We need to examine and improve the topology of the network. Then determine what is an efficient well-run network. Then make changes to the network that will improve its performance in ways that are beneficial to more of the actors that are affected by the value of the overall social welfare function. The social connections being established in web logs is informal and does not posses as strong a position in the formal network of politics. However it does have more immediacy and more reach. We don't have to find a dark room with nobody else listening to make deals because ours is an economy of openness where reputation is distributed by the quality of ones contributions to the dialog.
The potential for web logs to affect social change is yet to be determined. I have been attempting to develop a framework for measurement of social capital in web log community servers tightly bound private groove networks. By my initial calculations from the measurement framework being developed, the quantity or stock and the rate of change or flow of social capital contained in the just one community web log web service and server is astonishingly large. Further the potential number of web log communities indicates that inevitable changes to the rules and the dynamics of economic activity in various established industries one most talked about in web logs being journalism. I think similar changes in academia and politics universes will follow as they are both based on the trade of information and governed by the fundamental laws of a bazaar economy. In both academics and politics we struggle to generate a shared vision that in the end is the reality or understanding that the actors agree are basic truths. In Politics it boils down to the right track wrong track survey numbers while in academics it’s the fundamental theories that are accepted as true or most useful at anyone time in history. Both are in continuous flux as new information and new understanding evolve.
To date much of the corporation and coordination in the web log communities is focused on new software enhancements. In this gift economy many people freely contributing their creativity as code suggestions for improvements to the platform to the mediator in this case Dave Winner to improve the social welfare function of the entire community. Dave mediates the contributions distributing reputation to those he recognizes as good and passing the time and attention of many others by directing his readers to read the thoughts and contributions of other radio web log authors. It makes since that the early important highly reputable network actors in radio web log community server are developers because the community was built by developers for developers that wanted to make a tool for writing the two-way web. As the network grows and others of other backgrounds gain reputation on the social network there will be changes. Changes can both build and destroy the amount of social capital in the network. The third law of consumer participation in the value creation process on the Internet clearly states that in some cases it is beneficial for the members of the network to pool their resources and pay certain members not to participate and thus improve their collective social welfare as a result.
1:38:39 PM 
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