Re: nettime: the tide pool with the toll booth

[McKenzie Wark <mw35@is6.NYU.EDU>]

Bruce was one of the first people i noticed putting some thought
into the conditions of fair trading in the information economy,
in the boilerplate he appended to his very generous net offerings
of his own writing. 

Another way of framing the problem is this: if everyone adopted 
the well's 'you onw your own words' policy, the net wouldn't
work. Therefore, it cannot be an ethic for the net itself. So:
ought the net to be bound by some kindof categorical imperative
that is reflexive, that works every which way, or is it based
on the collision of incompatible principles of exhange that muddle
through from one negotiation to the next. I'm inclined to think
the latter is both a better description of reality and more
sustainable as an ethical practice. But the former view is very
common, both in the minds of participants and legislators.

______________________________________
McKenzie Wark  http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark
Visiting Professor, American Studies Program, New York University
"We no longer have origins we have terminals"

--
*  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
*  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
*  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
*  more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
*  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de